■) ■ 4 



,>-T,-,. : > --M 



Correlation of 

Vocational and Liberal Education 

Through Endish 



By 

MARY BELLE HOOTON, A. M. 

University of Nebraska (AS.T.G.) 



LONG AND COMPANY 

KUUGATIONAIi PUBLISHERS 
UNGOLN, NKBR, 



vs.- r;^ 7* 



Correlation of 

Vocational and Liberal Education 

Through Endish 



By 

MARY BELLE HOOTON, A. M. 

University of Nebraska (AS.T.G.) 



LONG AND COMPANY 

EDUCATIONAL PUBUSHERS 
LINCOLN, NEBR. 



p 



Copyright, 1918, by 

MARY BELLE HOOTON 

All Rights Reserved 



IAY27I9I8 



"Books are the food of youth, the ornament of prosperity 
and the refuge and comfort of adversity."— Cicero. 
©CI.A4974S2 



(?«J 



CONTENTS 



Pages 

OUTLINE 5-6 

Part I 
INTRODUCTION 7-15 

Part II 
EXISTING CONDITIONS 16-47 

Part III 
THE PROBLEM 48-74 

Part VI 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 75-78 



OUTLINE 
I. Introduction. 

A. English Language and Literature in Relation to Secondary 
Education. 

1. Agitation for Reorganization of English begins: 

a. National Education Association. 

(1) Reports of Committees on Secondary Schools: 
(a) Committee of Ten; (b) Committee of Fifteen; 
(c) Committee on College Entrance Require- 
ments. 

b. United States Bureau of Education. 

(1) Report (being printed) of Joint Committee on 
the Reorganization of English in the Secondary 
Schools — Representing the: (a) National Educa- 
tion Association; (b) National Council of 
Teachers of English. 

B. Education. 

1. Liberal Education. 

a. Develops, primarily, the intellectual and aesthetic 
capacities of the pupil's mind. 

b. Fits the individual to live among his fellow men. 

2, Vocational Education. 

a. Promotes, primarily, the capacity of the pupil to earn 
a living. 

b. Increases, primarily, the pupil's information or knowledge. 

C. Agitation for Reorganization of Public School System. 

1. Bulletin 1916. No. 8. 

D. Vocational Literature and Readings in Relation to Second- 
ary Education. 

1. Agitation concerning Vocational Education with reference to 
Readings in English Language and Literature was begun by: 

a. Frank Parsons of Boston, etc. 

2. From the agitation a wave of investigation swept over a part 
of our country, concerning so-called Vocational Studies and 
Readings in EngUsh Language and Literature. The results 
were embodied in the reports of: 

a. Michigan Schools Grand Rapids. 

b. Minnesota Schools High Schools of the State. 

c. Nebraska Schools Lincoln. 

3. United States Bureau of Education. 

a. Vocational Guidance through English Composition. 
(1) Bulletin 1914. No. 14. 

4. Ideas not yet clear as to what material is best to use owing to: 

a. Ignorance of English teachers as to subject matter. 

b. Carelessness and indifference as to whether Vocational 
matter in English should be taught, etc. 

5 



5. The present trend of the movement is to: 

a. Enlighten teachers as to the best Vocational Literature, 
or Reading Matter. 

b. Benefit the pupil by correlating Vocational and Liberal 
Education through Enghsh Language and Literature. 

c. Protect and aid the pupil while he is preparing to 
become an efficient member of society. 

H. Existing Conditions. 

A. In some parts of United States as shown by: 

1. Reports of School Surveys of the: 

a. Minnesota Schools. 

(1) Minneapolis Survey — for Vocational Education. 

b. Oregon Schools. 

(1) Portland Survey — of PubHc School System. 

c. Utah Schools. 

(1) Salt Lake City Survey— of Public School System. 

d. Virginia Schools. 

(1) Richmond Survey — for Vocational Education. 

2. Reports of U. S. Bureau of Education and the N. E. A. 

3. Questionnaires "A" and "B". 

in. The Problem. 

A. All phases of correlating Vocational and Liberal Education 
through English Language and Literature are not to be 
discussed in this thesis. Only the two phases, as to the: 

1. Subject matter of Vocational and General Literature. 

2. Method or process of correlating these two kinds of Literature 
which are of the Vocational and Liberal types of Education 
are to be considered. 

B. Correlation of Vocational and General Literature through: 

1. Study material in English Language and Literature. 

2. Reading material in English Language and Literature. 

3. Composition, or themes. 

a. Oral. 

b. Written. 

C. Method or process of correlation is to: 

1. Develop the cultural forces, or sensibilities of the: 

a. Vocationally trained pupil. 

b. Liberally trained pupil. 

2. Increase the knowledge or information of the: 

a. Vocationally trained pupil. 

b. Liberally trained pupil. 

3. Develop, primarily, the capacity of the vocationally trained 
pupil to: 

a. Earn a living. 

b. Become an efficient member of society. 
VL Bibliography. 



PROPOSALS 

Relating to.the 

ED UC ATION 

F 

YOUTH 

1 N 

P E N S I L VANIA. 




P H 1 LAT> EL? HIA: 
Printed in the Year. M.DCC.XLIX. 



niLK-PAGK OF franklin's PROPiJSAI. KELATlNi. lo 

THE EUrCATION OF YOUTH. 

Id the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 




THE PHILADELPHIA ACADEMY. 

From a pencil-drawing made by Du Simitiere, in the possession 
of the Library Company of Philadelphia. 



-■■t^ jtfci^- •. 



Part I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

The early secondary schools, in this country, were patterned after like 
schools in England. The high school, as it exists to-day, was largely developed 
as in substitution for the old academy. This was, primarily, a preparatory 
school for colleges, and its course of study was predetermined by that fact. 
In the Latin-Grammar Schools of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries 
only a few subjects were admitted since Latin and Greek were the groundwork 
of the college. To-day, in any high school which fits for college, there are as 
many different subjects as there are different lines of college study. The old- 
time uniformity has disappeared. The problem of preparing a course for the 
many students who will separate into widely different fields in future study 
or vocation had become complex, and in many of the smaller schools, it is 
well-nigh unsolvable. One of the fundamental questions relating to the 
high school of to-day is whether its education should be cultural or vocational. 
My idea of the primary purpose of the high school of to-day is to give personal 
culture, civic and moral development, physical efficiency and finally vocational 
efficiency. Our secondary schools should train and discipline pupils to think 
and know, to perceive and interpret, to analyze, at once and fully, difficult 
tasks and questions and to use good judgment through knowledge. The 
nation needs men who have been taken from the narrow surroundings of a 
somewhat simple life as well as those from the higher strata of society. A 
well-rounded education includes the development of the intellect, the sensibil- 
ities, and the volitional powers. Even Franklin's Academy followed largely 
the classical lines. He wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled "Proposals 
Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," in which he outlined 
what presumably was his ideal of an education. His ideal of education was 
vocational in intent as well as cultural. He says: 

' 'As to their studies, it would be well if they could be taught every thing that is useful and 
every thing that is ornamental. But art is long and their time is short. It is therefore proposed, 
that they learn those things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental, regard being 
had for the several professions for which they are intended." Franklin's own predilection "went 
no further than to procure the means of a good English education," and he particularly insisted 
in his pamphlet that the rector of the school should be "a correct, pure speaker and writer of 
English." (12). 

By secondary education, I mean the field of education which lies between 
the elementary education and that of the college and university, i. e., the 
public high school of to-day. Concerning the high schools. Carpenter, Baker 
and Scott have written: 



(12) Ford, pp. 106-116. 



"In the wonderful period of the New England transcendental movement, the days of a great 
intellectual awakening throughout the people at large, there appeared the most striking educa- 
tional phenomenon of the last hundred years in America, the widespread and urgent demand for 
local, free, well-organized secondary instruction. Beginning in Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
the two great sources of educational progress as long as New England retained its pre-eminence, 
it found its way throughout the Union and resulted in every state in the establishment of high 
schools. Like the academy, the high school was the representative of two institutions, — the old 
Latin school and the new school for the people of which Franklin had dreamed. Wherever the 
high school represented the Latin school, — i. e., in its classical course, — the study of Engish 
scarcely entered into the curriculum; wherever it represented the school for the people — i. e., in 
its so-called English or scientific course — English was a part of the curriculum; but only to the 
degree described above in connection with the academics. 

Up to about 1876, then, there was scarcely to be found, in the United States, any definite, 
well-organized system of secondary instruction in the mother-tongue. We were virtually in the 
same condition that England now is, and at least fifty years behind Germany. The Americans 
have always been a reading people, and there was a growing interest among scholars and laymen 
in the English language and in English literature. But only here and there had this penetrated 
into the secondary school system." (7) 

It was not long after the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, 
before the elements which make up our curriculum in English came into 
existence. Declamation and oratory, best typified in lectures given at Harvard 
College in 1806-1808; instruction in Rhetoric and Composition as given in 
several American Colleges during the middle of the century; and English 
Literature as given in a meager way about 1875 were introduced and then 
developed with great rapidity. But what do we mean by literature? One 
literary critic with considerable insight has said: 

"Popularly, and among the thoughtless, it is held to include every thing that is printed 
in a book. Little logic is required to disturb that definition; the most thoughtless person is easily 
made aware, that in the idea of literalure, one essential element is, — some relation to a general 
and common interest of man, so that, what applies only to a local, or professional, or merely 
personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong to literature. 
So far the definition is easily narrowed; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is much that 
takes a station in books not literature; but inversely, much that really in literature never reaches 
a station in books. The weekly sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature which acts 
so extensively upon the human mind — to warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm, does 
not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten-thousandth part of its extent. The drama again, 
as for instance, the finest of Shakespeare's plays in England, and all leading Athenian plays in 
the noontide of the Attic stage, operated as literature on the public mind, and were (according 
to the strictest letter of that term) published through the audiences that witnessed their representa- 
tion some time before they were published as things to be read; and they were published in this 
scenical mode of publication with much more effect than they could have had as books, therefore, 
do not suggest an idea co-extensive and interchangeable with the idea of literature; since much 
literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from lectures and public orators), may never come 
into books; and much that dots come into books, may connect itself with no literary interest.' 
But a far more important correction, applicable to the common vague idea of literature, is to be 
sought — not so much in a better definition of literature, as in a sharper distinction of the two 
functions which it fulfils. In that great social organ, which, correctly, we call literature, there 



(7) Carpenter, Baker and Scott, p. 46. 

'What are called The Blue Books, by which title are understood the folio Reports issued 
every session of Parliament by committees of the two Houses, and stitched into blue covers, — 
though often sneered at by the ignorant as so much waste paper, will be acknowledged gratefully 
by those who have used them diligently, as the main well-heads of all accurate information as 
to the Great Britain of this day as an immense depository of faithful (and not superannuated; 
statistics, they are indispensible to the honest student. But no man would therefore class the 
Blue Books as literature. 

8 



may be distinguished two separate offices that may blend and often do so, but capable, severally, 
of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is first, the literature 
of knowledge; and, secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is — to teach; the 
function of the second — to move; the first is a rudder; the second, an oar or a sail. The first 
speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to 
the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy." (11) 

Arnold Bennett in "Literary Taste — How to Form It," says: 

"I have only one cautionary word to utter. You may be saying to yourself: 'So long as I 
stick to classics, I cannot go wrong.' You can go wrong. You can, while reading naught but 
very fine stuff, commit the grave error of reading too much of one kind of stuflf. Now there are 
two kinds and only two kinds. These two kinds are not prose and poetry, nor are they divided 
the one from the other by any differences of form or subject. They are the inspirmg kind and 
the informing kind. No other genuine division exists in literature. Emerson, I think, first 
clearly stated it. His terms were literature of "power" and the literature of "knowledge". In 
nearly all great literature the two qualities are to be found in company, but one usually predomi- 
nates over the other. An example of the exclusively inspiring kind is Coleridge's Kubla Kahn. 
I cannot recall any first-class example of the purely informing kind. The nearest approach to 
it that I can name is Spencer's First Principles, which, however, is at least once highly inspiring. 
An example in which the inspiring quality predominates is Ivanhoe; and an example in which 
the informing quality predominates is Hazlitt's essays on Shakespeare's characters. You must 
avoid undue preference to the kind in which the inspiring quality predominates or to the kind 
in which the informing quality predominates. Too much of the one is enervating; too much 
of the other is desiccating. If you stick exclusively to the one you may become a mere debauchee 
of the emotions; if you stick exclusively to the other you may cease to live in any full sense. 
I do not say you should hold the balance exactly between the two kinds. Your taste will come 
into the scale. What I say is that neither kind must be neglected." (4) 

"The high school has ceased to be mainly a preparatory school. This fact explains why 
there is a movement for the reorganization of the English course and indicates what the general 
character of the reorganization is likely to be. Agitation for reform in English is not unique. 
It is identical in spirit with the effort to develop a better type of course in history, mathematics 
science, and foreign languages, and has much in common with current demands for increased 
emphasis upon art, music, physical education, manual training, agriculture, and domestic science. 
After more than half a century of struggle, the public high school has definitely established itself 
as a continuation of common school education, as a finishing school (in the good sense of that 
term.) rather than a fitting school, and now recognizing its freedom and its responsibility, it has set 
to work in earnest to adjust itself to its main task." (33) 

It was then, in 1876, that a remarkable movement began, which had the 
result of making the study of English pre-eminent in the more important 
colleges and putting it in a distinguished place in the secondary schools. The 
desire for this change came partly from the colleges and partly from the 
secondary schools themselves. In 1873-1874, Harvard instituted an entrance 
examination in English in favor of grammatical and rhetorical accuracy in the 
use of English on the part of the students entering college. The preparatory 
schools were necessarily bound -to keep pace with this. The high school 
authorities, on the other hand, were little concerned about what was taught 
in colleges, simply desiring to give to their pupils the wisest, most thorough 
course possible in English Literature and English Composition. The agita- 
tion has been carried on by conventions, conferences, reports of committees 

(11) De Quincey, pp. 3-4. 
(4) Bennett, pp. 68-69. 

(33) Report of National Joint Committee on the Reorganization of High-School English. 
(Being printed now by the United States Bureau of Education.) 



and in our educational press until great interest has been aroused throughout 
the country on the subject of a graded course in English instruction; and 
definite principles have been formulated on which instruction in English may 
be based. 

The admission requirements in English, 1873-1874, at Harvard College 
were important because they established a type of preparation and examina- 
tion which has existed even up to the present time. This example of Harvard 
was followed by other colleges and led to the formation of the commission of 
New England Colleges on admission examinations, which undertook the task 
of formulating from year to year the requirements in English. Several attempts 
were made to secure uniformity in English. The National Education Associa- 
tion (N. E. A.) showed a marked interest in the teaching of English and the 
publication of the report of the National Committee of Ten on English in 
Secondary Schools gave a new basis to instruction in English. This admirable 
report was the first attempt in England or America, to systematize secondary 
instruction in English. 

The Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education (1895) which recom- 
mended a systematic course in English for the elementary schools and the 
Committee on College Entrance Requirements (1899) which formulated a 
course of study leading to the College Requirements and the Report of the 
Committee of Ten which formulated, primarily, a course of study for the 
secondary schools, have had two marked results which are as follows: (45) 

1. Great interest has been aroused throughout the country regarding a 
graded course of instruction in English. 

2. Definite principles have been formulated on which instruction in 
English may be based. 

The custom of giving certain master pieces of English literature as the 
basis of written tests became firmly established, Yale College, in 1892 having 
begun it, but the test in oral reading seems to have been omitted. 

The National Education Association tried to follow up the Committee 
of Ten by appointing a Committee of College Entrance Requirements in 
English, the report being published, July, 1899. The point of view was still 
that of preparation for college, however, so the English course could not be 
considered on its merits as contributing to the needs of the pupil, irrespective 
of whether he is to enter vocational work or not. The ideal course in the 
high school is such as aims to prepare for either the Academic course or the 
Vocafional one. 

For the last five years a " Report of the Joint Committee on the Re- 
organization of English in the Secondary Schools," representing the National 
Education Association and the National Council of Teachers of English has 
been in preparation and is now being printed by the United States Bureau 
of Education which will soon be available for use among the teachers of 
English. This suggestive outline of the High School Course in EngHsh deals 
mainly, if not altogether, with the general course in Literature omitting that 
which I deem very important in this present Industrial Age, namely, the 



(45) Committtee of Ten, p. 86. 

10 



suggestive outline for Vocational Literature. This is very much needed, at 
the present time, in order that the pupil may keep in touch with the vocational 
life now. It is certainly commendable in that it recommends very highly 
oral and written composition and largely applied technical grammar. As the 
aim of the course is that of a "finishing" school rather than that of a "fitting" 
school it should provide, somewhat, for Vocational Literature. 

Education is development or applied psychology. One phase of the 
entire educational process from the point of view of the purposes which may be 
kept in view in selecting and appraising methods and means is that: 

"All ordinary education readily lends itself to a fourfold division in this connection. 
(a) There is a kind of education whose chief aim is to produce and preserve bodily efficiency, 
such as health, strength, and working power. This we call broadly physical education, (b) Next 
is the kind of education whose chief aim is to earn a living or expressed in more social terms the 
capacity to do one's share of the productive work of the world, (c) A third form of education 
is designed, primarily, to fit the individual to live among his fellows. Religious education, mental 
instruction, and training in civics contribute to this end. (d) There is, furthermore, the kind of 
education that aims to develop intellectual and aesthetic capacities, apart from any practical use 
to which these may be put. This education is frequently designated by the term "cultural", 
but in a somewhat special sense of the word. The two last divisions, which contribute respectively 
to the improvement of social life and to the development of personal culture, will in this discussion 
be grouped together under the general designation, "liberal education". That education whose 
chief aim is to fit for productive capacity will be designated as "vocational." (38) 

The entire educational process in a broad sense, may be considered, then 
on the basis of a two-fold classification: liberal and vocational. 

"WHAT IS LIBERAL EDUCATION? 

Historically speaking, a liberal education is that which aims to broaden the intellectual 
and the emotional horizon of the individual, and especially in those fields that are not involved 
in the earning of a livelihood. * * * 

Liberal education may be interpreted as that which concerns itself with the consuming, as 
opposed to the productive processes of life. Each individual uses in greater or less degree, accord- 
ing to his cultivation and social capacity the world's stock of literature, history, music, art, science, 
and human associations, as well as embodiments of these in more material forms. It is the func- 
tion of liberal education to teach persons how to use or how to consume to the best individual 
or social advantage the work of others. Liberal education is not, primarily, concerned with the 
making of the efficient producer, altho it makes important indirect contribution to that end; 
but it is vocational education which aims to train the producer as such, and it looks primarily 
towards specialization * * *. 

In these later days we have learned more about the psychological side of liberal education. 
We have discovered that so far as large numbers of individuals are concerned the truest form of 
liberal education does not consist in dealing with those things that are most remote from the 
practical aflfairs of daily life. 

WHAT IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION? 

In vocational education, the choice of materials and methods is primarily determined by 
the necessities of some of the numerous callings or groups of related callings, into which the workers 
of the world have divided themselves. 

That vocational education which is specialized to the preparation of lawyers, physicians, 
and teachers, we call professional; that which is designated to train the bookkeeper, clerk, stenog- 
rapher, or commercial traveler, including leadership, we call commercial; that which is organ- 
ized with reference to the bricklayer, the machinist, the shoemaker, the metal worker, the factory- 
hand and the higher manufacturing pursuits, we call industrial education; that which conveys 



(38) Snedden, pp. 3-4. 

11 



skill and knowledge looking to the tillage of the soil and the management of domestic animals 
we call agricultural; and that which teaches the girl dressmaking, cooking and management of 
the home, we call education in the household arts." (38) 

The types of vocational education then are: 

1, Professional. 3. Agricultural. 

2. Commercial. 4. Household Arts,^ etc. 
Liberal education develops, primarily, the intellectual and aesthetic 

capacities and fits the individual to live among his fellow men but it does not 
promote, primarily, the capacity to earn a living nor does it increase, primarily, 
the pupil's vocational information. 

Vocational education promotes, primarily, the capacity of the pupil to 
earn a living and increases, primarily, the pupil's information or knowledge 
but does not, primarily, develop the cultural forces of the pupil's mind. 

There is also an agitation for the reorganization of the Public School 
System and the reorganization of the Secondary School System as well as for 
the reorganization of English in order to provide better accommodations for 
both the vocationally trained pupil and the liberally trained one. 

The Committee of Ten declares: 

"The secondary schools of the United States, taken as a whole, do not exist for the purpose 
of preparing boys and girls for college. Only an insignificant percentage of the graduates of 
these schools go to colleges or scientific schools. Their main function is to prepare for the duties 
of life that small proportion of all the children in the country — a proportion small in number, 
but very important to the welfare of the nation — who show themselves able to profit by an edu- 
cation prolonged to the eighteenth year and whose parents are able to support them while they 
remain so long at school." 

And, again, the Committee says: 

"A secondary-school program intended for national use must therefore be made for those 
children whose education is not to be pursued beyond the secondary school. The preparation 
of a few pupils for college or scientific school should in the ordinary secondary school, be the in,' 
cidental and not the principal object." * * * 

The Committee of Fifteen reported as follows: 

"Your committee is agreed that the time devoted to the elementary school work should 
not be reduced from eight years, but have recommended, as hereinbefore stated, that in the 
seventh and eighth years a modified form of algebra be introduced in place of advanced arithmetic 
and that in the eighth year English grammar yield place to Latin." * * * 

The Committee on College Entrance Requirements makes the following 
recommendations : 

"In our opinion it is important that the last two grades that now precede the high-school 
course should be incorporated in it, and, wherever practicable, the instruction in those two grades 
should be given under the supervision of the high-school teacher." * * * 

President Butler, in seeking to define the scope of secondary education 
and its purpose, gave an illuminating characterization of both the elementary 
and secondary periods of school life. This characterization, in part, follows: 



(38) Snedden, pp. 4-9. 

^Sometimes called the "Practical Arts". The "Practical Arts", a term used in Prevocational 
Schools — Grades VII-VIII-IX which includes Manual Training, Cooking, Sewing, etc. It is 
also called Domestic Science. In some cases "Practical Arts" includes Industrial Arts, Agricul- 
ture and Domestic Science. 

12 



"Elementary education I define as that general training in the elements of knowledge that 
is suitable for a pupil from the age of 6 or 7 to the period of adolescence. It is ordinarily organ- 
ized in either eight or nine grades, each occupying an academical year. Nine grades are too 
many and are distinctly wasteful. To spend so much time on these simple studies leads to that 
arrested development which is so often the bane of the elementary school period. I have never 
known a child who needed more than six years' time in which to complete the elementary course, 
and I have known but few who have, as an actual fact, ever taken longer than that. * * * The 
secondary school period is essentially the period of adolescence, of what may be called the active 
adolescence as distinguished from the later and less violent manifestations of physical and mental 
change that are now usually included under the term. The normal years are, with us from 12 to 
16, or from 13 to 17. The normal boy or girl who is going to college ought to enter at 17 at the 
latest. * * * It is in the elimination of elementary studies from the secondary school and the frank 
recognition of the paramount advantage of the elective system that I see the way of highest 
usefulness opening before the secondary school." 

This address by President Butler and the report of the Committee on 
College Entrance Requirements, with the debate which the positive recom- 
mendations of the latter aroused, closed the first decade of the discussion 
looking toward a functional articulation of the parts of the school system. 

During the second decade a paper by Dr. E. W. Lyttle, state inspector 
of high schools for New York, on the subject, "Should the Twelve- Year Course 
of Study Be Equally Divided Between the Elementary School and the Sec- 
ondary?" was given. 

"This led, in 1905, to the appointing of a standing committee to consider the question of 
dividing the 12 years equally between elementary and secondary schools. Dr. Lyttle advocated, 
in the paper just referred to, such a division, on the grounds that the eight-year grade course is 
the result of a desire to attain "perfection in the fundamentals"; that there is a pedagogical 
point where secondary education should begin, which occurs when the child has acquired the 
tools of an education, and at a point coinciding with the dawn of adolescence; that this period 
is characterized in both the content and method of instruction; and that a six-year high-school 
course would lend itself in the eleventh and twelfth grades to a differentiation along lines of 
business, mechanical arts, and professional preparation." (46) 

In the reorganization plan under which the school department of Berkeley, 
California, is now working, which was inaugurated in January, 1910, the 
twelve grades, or years, are divided into three groups, the elementary, com- 
prising the first six years of school life; the lower high school (called Prevoca- 
tional and Junior High School or Intermediate, or Central School in some 
places) comprising the seventh, eighth, and ninth years; and the higher or 
high school, embracing all pupils of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth years. 
In this thesis the plan is for a Prevocational and Junior High School of three 
years and a Senior High of three years duration, i. e., on the basis of a "six- 
three-three" plan. 

As to the agitation concerning Vocational Education with reference to 
Readings in English Language and Literature, or along the lines of Vocational 
Guidance the following statement is made by J. B. Davis, of Grand Rapids, 
Michigan: 

"The first work done in vocational guidance that was done in the United States was not 
connected with the public school system. Men who had to deal with the drifting thousands of 
people that are always looking for a job or some better position than the one at the present time 
occupied, were the first to realize the need of helping these unfortunate wanderers into the kind 



(46) U. S. Bulletin of Education, pp. 49-65. 

13 



of labor for which they were by nature and experience best fitted. To Mr. Frank Parsons of the 
vocation bureau of Civic Service Home in Boston is due the credit for introducing the methods 
of vocational guidance that have proved so valuable to the workers in all branches of the move- 
ment." (10) 

A wave of investigation and a desire to know just what should be done 
in Vocational Education with reference to Readings and Studies in English 
Language and Literature resulted, in one instance, in the publishing of a book 
"Vocational and Moral Guidance", by J. B. Davis, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. 
This book helped to lay the foundation for some so-called Vocational Readings 
in a number of the schools. 

In the Suggestive Outlines — For Study Courses in Minnesota High 
Schools (prepared by a special Committee of High School Superintendents) 
the following is given: 

"That school is a part of life is a fact that pupils often fail to realize. To awaken, possibilities 
and responsibilities of life, the Central High School of Grand Rapids, Michigan, originated the 
plan for vocational and moral guidance. The operation of the plan in that high school has not 
only given a moral instruction but it has also furnished vital topics for theme writing. The 
themes on vocational topics do not take mope than one-fourth of the time given to composition." 

This excerpt is followed by a somewhat similar outline for "Vocational 
Guidance through English Composition," as given in "Vocational and Moral 
Guidance", by J. B. Davis — with similar Readings, and also as given in a 
United States Bureau of Education Bulletin which will be indicated later. 

Not only is the Minnesota Vocational Reading Matter based largely on 
this material but the so-called Vocational Readings of the Lincoln, Nebraska, 
Schools are also largely based upon it. The following outline, though some- 
what changed is largely used by the Lincoln, Nebraska, Schools and is indicated 
in "Vocational Guidance", Bulletin, 1914. No. 14. 

"VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE THROUGH ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

Work in the Grand Rapids (Mich.) High Schools under Jesse B. Davis, vocational director. 
Members of the vocational conference were admitted to the classrooms to observe the pupils 
in the discussion of vocational topics according to the following outline: 
Seventh-grade theme: Vocational ambition. 

Purpose, to arouse within the pupil a desire to be somebody and something worth whil,e 

in the world. 
Eighth-grade theme: The value of an education. 

Purpose, to impress upon the pupil the need and means of obtaining some further 

preparation for life than that of the grammar grades of the public schools. 
Ninth-grade theme, first semester: The elements of character that make for success in life. 

Purpose, to draw out an understanding of real success in life and how it is obtained, 

and to apply the fundamental lessons of character building to the needs of each pupil. 
Ninth-grade theme, second semester: Vocational biographtj. 

Purpose, to continue the same lessons from the lives of successful men and women in 

varied fields of endeavor. 
Tenth-grade theme, first semester: The world's work. 

Purpose, to study vocation in general in order that the pupil's vision of the call to 

service may be as broad as possible. 
Tenth-grade theme, second semester: Choosing a vocation. 

Purpose, to attempt to select that vocation or general field of occupation for which 

the pupil by self-analysis seems best fitted. 



(10) Davis, p. 137. 

14 



Eleventh-grade theme, first semester: Preparation for life's work. 

Purpose, to plan out a definite course of study and conduct to meet the special require- 
ments of the profession, business, or industry chosen. 

Eleventh-grade theme, second semester: Vocationnl ethics. 

Purpose, to study the moral problems peculiar to the chosen business, profession, or 
occupation. 

Twelfth-grade theme, first semester: Social ethics. 

Purpose, to study the relation of the individual in his future vocation to society. 

Twelfth-grade theme, second semester: Civic ethics. 

Purpose, to study the relation of the individual in his future vocation to the state." (48) 

As to the General Literature of the recently mentioned schools it is very 
good with the exception, perhaps, of classifying some of our very best General 
Literature under Vocational Readings. To me, "The Perfect Tribute" 
(Lincoln) as classed by J. B. Davis under Vocational Biography, is Literature 
of power, and not Literature of knowledge. "Helen Keller — "Story of My 
Life" and also "The Perfect Tribute" (Lincoln) are classed by the Lincoln, 
Nebraska, Schools under Vocational Biography. This to me, seems a wrong 
classification, as I think both of these belong, properly, under Literature of 
power and should be classed as General Literature, belonging primarily to 
Liberal Education rather than to Vocational Education. I further think that 
all or at least most of these Vocational Readings as given may be classed 
more properly under what De Quincey calls the "Middle Zone". Yet, at the 
same time, we will get better results if we have a clear-cut distinctive list for 
General Literature and also one for Vocational Literature. Then the other 
Readings may be put under "C" as in the present outlined Course of Study 
and may belong to the " Middle Zone" for the time-being, until better classified 
or until tested and tried out. 

"The reason why the broad distinction between the two literatures of power and knowledge so 
little fix the attention, lies in the fact, that a vast proportion of books^history, biography, travels, 
miscellaneous essays, etc., lying in a middle zone, confound these distinctions by inter-blending 
them. All that we call 'amusement' or 'entertainment', is a diluted form of power belonging 
to passion, and also a mixed form; and where threads of direct instructions intermingle in the 
texture with these threads of power, this absorption of duality into one representative nuance 
neutralizes the separate perception of either. Fused into a tertium quid, or neutral state, they 
disappear to the popular eye as the repelling forces, which in fact, they are." (11) 

The one thing now needful, owing to the ignorance of English teachers as 
to subject matter to be used in Vocational Literature, and the carelessness and 
indifference as to whether Vocational Literature or Vocational Reading matter 
should be taught in English is to enlighten teachers as to the best Vocational 
Literature, or Reading matter. The present purpose of this thesis is to benefit 
the pupil, as well as the teacher, by correlating Vocational and Liberal Educa- 
tion through English Language and Literature by using both the Literature 
of power and the Literature of knowledge so the pupil may be protected and 
aided while he is preparing to be an efficient member of society. 

The problem in correlating Vocational and Liberal Education through 
English Language and Literature is to give culture as well as knowledge or 
information to the vocationally trained pupil and knowledge or information 
as well as culture to the culturally trained one. How may this be done? 

(48) United States Bureau, p. 91. 
(11) De Quincey, p. 11. 

15 



Part II. 
EXISTING CONDITIONS. 

In order to ascertain the existing conditions of English Language and 
Literature in the schools of the United States, reports from School Surveys; 
reports from United States Bureau of Education; reports from. National 
Education Association; and two forms of Questionnaires, "A" and "B", 
were decided upon as the minimum amount of investigation in the attempt 
to secure reliable data upon which to base any conclusions or recommendations. 

From the Report of the Minneapolis Survey for Vocational Education 
(Jan. 1, 1916) I have selected the vocational courses in English which seem 
to me very meager. These courses with some suggestions and remarks are 
indicated as follows: 

"SUMMARY OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE ACTIVITIES OF THE SURVEY AND CON- 
CLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE SURVEY COMMITTEE. 

1. Analysis of the knowledge necessary for successful salesmanship shows that there is a 
definite teachable content in retail salesmanship. 

2. Less than an elementary school education is not enough for store work, and a high 
school education is desirable. * * * 

OUTLINES OF COURSE OF STUDY WORKED OUT BY THE SURVEY WITH THE 
TRADES AND APPROVED BY THEM. 

Two courses of study for girls and women and four for boys and men are given. In the 
case of women, salesmanship and garment-making were taken because they represent two widely 
different lines of employment. They also represent the two largest lines of employment for girls 
and women. 

In the case of the men's trades, three courses of study were chosen to represent day, dull 
season and evening classes, giving instruction for the occupations of carpenter, bricklayer, and 
telephone worker, respectively. A fourth course offers suggestions as to the subject-matter 
which should be taught to the workers in the milling industry, while a fifth gives the technical 
course for boys which has just been established at the Central High School. * * * 

COURSES FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN. 
Courses for girls and women are outlined as follows:^ 

1. SALESMANSHIP. 
I. Introductory Course. 

For aisle girls, messengers, stock keepers, and others who wish to qualify as sales persons. 
(1) To test the general ability. (2) To determine the attitude toward store work, and (3) to 
serve as a basis for eliminating those lacking fundamental education. 
2. English and spelling. 

A. Oral EngHsh. 

a. For ability to express simple information about merchandise correctly; 
(b) for use in greeting a customer and ordinary conversation. 

B. Dictation exercise to test: 

a. Ability to take customer's orders or directions. 

b. Common facts about merchandise. 

C. Spelling lists of words selected to suit the needs and ability of each group of 
beginners. 

a. Words in common use; b. Names of merchandise; c. Names of streets. * * * 



iJust courses in English only are given. 

16 



II. Elementary Salesmanship. 

(1) To test the talent for salesmanship, (2) to serve as a basis for eliminating those unsuited 
for store work, (3) to assist in classifying workers as stock-keepers, sales persons, or office 
workers. 

1. Salesmanship. * * * 

3. English. 

A. Oral. 

a. Talking about merchandise; b. repeating and giving directions; c. tele- 
phone conversation; d. talking to employers when applying in person for 
a position. 

B. Written. 

a. Business letters. 

aa. Letters of inquiry; bb. answers to inquiries. 

b. Short description of merchandise. 

C. Dictation. 

a. Directions for amounts, kinds of merchandise; b. names and addresses 
of customers; c. short business letters. 

D. Reading such literature on salesmanship and merchandise as beginners can 
understand. 

a. Salesmanship literature; b. descriptions of merchandise, methods of manu- 
facture; c. trade journals. 

E. Spelling. 

a. Words in common use; b. names of merchandise, especially the kinds that 
are being handled from day to day, and new merchandise; c. drill in 
names of streets; d. abbreviations in common use. * * * 

III. Salesmanship and department duties. 

Pupils for these courses (when given in the store) should be taken from the departments 
having merchandise with points in common. This course is a continuation of the elementary 
course. Its aims are (1) to develop selling ability, (2) to give specific information about 
merchandise and methods obtaining such information, (3) to give methods for learning new 
points about merchandise, and (4) to develop ability to meet and deal with people. * * * 

3. English. 

A. Oral continuation of the work outlined in the previous course as applied to the 
demonstration sales and talks about merchandise. 

B. Written. 

a. Description of merchandise; b. plans for demonstration sales; c. selling 
talks; d. taking notes from buyers' talks and advisers' talks. 

C. Reading. 

a. Keep up-to-date with the trade journals; b. methods for manufacture of 
merchandise; c. current magazines and newspapers for general informa- 
tion; d. literature, selected classics. * * * 
ADVANCED COURSE IN SALESMANSHIP for persons who have been in the store a year 
or more. To be conducted as class work or club work, for persons selected from allied depart- 
ments. The object of this course is to develop a knowledge of scientific salesmanship and 
study of merchandise. * * * 

4. Required Readings from trade journals and books on salesmanship discussed and 
debated. 

5. Current literature, magazines, newspapers for general information. * * * 
7. Literature selected classics. 

2. Garment-making Industries. 
(X) * * * 

(2) Business English." 

In the Course of Study for boys and men the English seems to be very 
much neglected for in carpentry, bricklaying, cement, telephony, and flour 
mills, no mention was made of English except in one case. Then only the 
word English was written under carpentry. 



17 



"SUGGESTIONS FOR COURSES OP STUDY FOR PRE VOCATIONAL CLASSES. 

A. Academic work to occupy approximately half the time of the pupil: 

1. English: Language work, based on reading, much of it to bear upon the industries; 
composition, dealing with the occupational work in the school and the industries visited by the 
pupil; business correspondence, business forms, spelling and the ability to interpret printed 
directions and to carry on business correspondence. 

The two-year course of study includes salesmanship, bookkeeping, shorthand, typewriting, 
English, civics, hygiene, office training and practice, physical training, cooking (once a week) 
and arithmetic and penmanship for those who are weak in those subjects. * * * 

The essential educational qualifications are practically the same for all occupations in the 
trade, though artistic qualifications may vary considerable. One should have a knowledge of 
the fundamental processes of arithmetic and common and decimal fractions and simple percentage; 
sufficient knowledge of English to speak and write clearly; ability to spell words in common use 
and the names of materials used in the trade; and a knowledge of such simple business forms 
as a bill, a receipt, a check, a money order, and how to indorse a check or money order. 

Several dressmakers expressed themselves as very much in favor of vocational training in 
sewing and dressmaking and of such instruction in art as might be correlated with dressmaking. 
Several dressmakers when asked how much education a girl should have in order to make the 
dressmaking trade her vocation said, in substance: *As much as they can get. The girl who 
lacks education cannot get ahead.' Only one was, *I don't care anything about her education 
so long as she can sew.' 

Ability to take directions readily and carry them out accurately, initiative, alertness, prompt- 
ness, and willingness are among the personal qualities every worker must have if she is to rise 
above the level of the lower occupations in the trade. The power to observe and to visualize, a 
quality which helps to develop artistic ability, is necessary for success in the dressmaking trade. 
All workers in the trade should have a knowledge of colors and color harmony, and good taste in 
the arrangement of colors, trimmings and the lines of the garment. Creative ability, as in the 
planning of gowns to suit individual persons, is a very high order of art which relatively few 
persons in the trade acquire. * * * 

Certain personal and artistic qualifications are essential to the success of the millinery worker. 
Adaptability which enables her to keep a flexible point of view with regard- to methods of work 
and changing standards of fashion is especially important, since the trade is so largely dependent 
upon style. The power to observe and visualize is probably equally important, since much of the 
milliner's creative power is a result of her ability to use with originality any details that con- 
tribute to artistic head dress. Adaptability is largely a matter of temperament, a quality which 
training cannot supply, while the power to observe and visualize, though perhaps somewhat 
innate, may be developed by experience in and training for the trade. 

The essential education qualifications in the millinery trade are common to all occupations 
in trade. A knowledge of arithmetic through fractions and simple percentage, sufficient English 
to speak and write clearly, ability to spell words in common use and names of materials used in 
the trade, and a knowledge of business forms are the most important requirements. * * * 

PROMOTION OF WORKERS. 

Naturally a person entering any kind of business or profession is interested in knowing 
what are the chances of promotion and what he must do or be in order to be promoted. On the 
other hand, if employers are to be expected to promote workers they have a right to demand 
that persons asking for promotion shall deserve it. Many employees in stores are dissatisfied 
because they are receiving only a small wage. When some of these were asked what they had 
done to deserve promotion, they replied: 'Nothing', or 'I've tried to do my best every day.' 
When asked if they were aware of having any deficiencies, or if they were doing their work as 
well as it could be done, they hesitated, perhaps did not answer at all, or said, *I suppose we all 
have deficiencies.' 

"A few of the brightest and most progressive gave with quickness and intelligence, some of 
the following answers: 'I need to know stock better'; 'I couldn't be a buyer because I couldn't 
train others'; 'I lack confidence'; 'I lack experience in serving customers'; 'I lack knowledge 
of values'; 'I can't talk well enough'; 'I do not use English well'; 'I do not always handle 
customers in the right way'. One young woman who had had two years in high school and two 
years in normal school said that she didn't have enough education." 

18 



"When heads of departments were asked what were the deficiencies of those who worked 
under their direction, they gave such replies as these: 'They are indifferent to the store, to 
customers, and to themselves'; 'they fail to grasp the idea of service in merchandising'; they 
visit too much with each other, with friends who come in and over the telephone'; and 'they 
will not take responsibility '. 

Other replies were: 'They lack knowledge of stock and do not keep stock properly'; 'they 
lack accuracy in the use of arithmetic and English, and their language is crude and full of slang'; 
'they can't judge people'; 'they lack self-control and self-confidence'." (29) 

In the Survey of the Portland Schools the Survey Committee in order 
to secure greater efficiency in English as well as in other studies advocated a 
change in the school system which is indicated below with their verdict regard- 
ing English: 

"To summarize this discussion of the types of additional schools needed, the following recom- 
mendations are made: 

1. The school system should be reorganized, to secure greater educational efficiency, into 
the following units: 

a. Kindergarten, one year. 

b. Elementary schools, six years. 

c. Intermediate schools, three years. 

d. High schools, five years (three or four years now; five ultimately). 

The Present System of Elementary and Secondary Instruction. 

This can be made a truly American system, fitted to meet the social, professional, industrial, 
and commercial needs of American boys and girls. 

THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY INSTRUCTION. 

In the personal study of the schools it was thought preferable to devote all of the limited 
time to a few schools, that might be considered typical, rather than to divide the time among all 
the schools. Carrying out this plan, the following schools were studied: The three high schools, 
one day being devoted to each; the School of Trades, one forenoon; the School for the Deaf, 
Brooklyn School, one forenoon; the Highland School, one full day; the Alerta School, one full 
day; the Glencoe School, one morning; the Holladay School, one full day; the Couch School, 
one forenoon; the Failing School, one forenoon; and the Shattuck School, one afternoon. The 
inspection of the work of the elementary schools was so planned that some exercises were seen in 
all subjects; in the principal subjects^reading, language, arithmetic, geography, and history — 
exercises were seen in every grade of each subject, and usually in more than one class, some- 
times in several classes of a grade. * * * 

SOME SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONTENT OF THE 
ELEMENTARY COURSE OF STUDY. 

In respect to content — and lack of content — the elementary course of study presents the 
following significant characteristics: * * * 

2. The overwhelmingly abstract and bookish character of the course as a whole, offering 
far too little that is suitable to the education of that large minority, if not actual majority, of 
children who must be educated through contact with concrete things. 

3. The excessive amount of time given to technical grammar. 

4. Inadequate attention to composition, both oral and written. 

EXCESSIVE ATTENTION GIVEN TO TECHNICAL GRAMMAR LARGELY WASTED 

EFFORT. 

In the published course of study the general term "language" is used to designate work 
both in technical grammar and in composition. In practice three exercises per week are devoted 
to the former, and two to the latter. So far as could be discovered by listening to several exercises. 



(29) Minneapolis Survey, pp. 412-696. 

19 



both in grammar and in composition, and by talking with teachers, these subjects as taught aw 
just about as independent as arithmetic and history. It does not appear that grammar, in the 
elementary course of study, is contributing 'to a deeper appreciation of literature and to the 
development of power in composition', as the 'Syllabus of the Course in English 'i for the Port- 
land High Schools rightly maintains to bs ths sole function of this subject. 

The grammar prescribed is abstract and technical in the extreme, and the assignment for 
every grade far beyond the real comprehension of most pupils of that grade. Beginning with 
Third B, and continuing through Sixth A, pupils have been required to study, in Modern English 
Lessons, about as much grammar as could be made of practical value in the entire elementary 
course; but with the Sixth B the extensive study of technical grammar begins in real earnest. 
From this point on, the assignments are from Buehler's Modern English Grammar, a book best 
suited to high school grades, but entirely out of place in the sixth and seventh grades. After 
three and one-half years' study of this technical book in the elementary schools, from page 15 
to page 358 inclusive, the same book is again prescribed for three years of further study in the | 
high schools. To make the matter worse, the high school instruction begins at the beginning, 
with the simple sentence and the parts of speech. 

It is scarcely too much to say that the time now devoted to technical grammar in grades 
six to nine inclusive is wasted. In these grades not more than one-half as much time as now 
should be given to grammar, and that not technical, but practical and comprehensible to the 
pupil. 

COMPOSITION NEGLECTED. 

The time and attention devoted to composition is as inadequate as that devoted to grammar 
is excessive. While two exercises per week are given to the former and three to the latter, com- 
position does not appear actually to receive as much as two-fifths of the effort expended on 
'language'. It is quite possible that the final term examinations are largely responsible for the 
preponderance of emphasis on grammar, out of proportion to the time allotment. However this 
may be, typical term examinations fairly represent the relative importance that seems to be 
accorded these two phases of 'language'; in these examinations the relative value of composition, 
as compared with that of grammar, certainly appears as something less than the ratio of two to 
three. Following is a copy of the final term examination, given in January, 1913, and covering 
the work in grammar for the seventh grade: 

GRAMMAR EXAMINATION QUESTIONS— SEVENTH GRADE. 

I. a. Define Complement. 

b. Give example of each kind of complement in a sentence. 
II. a. Select the complements in the following, tell the kind, giving reason for your answer in 
the case: 

1. A soft answer turneth away wrath. 

2. The great forest became the home of Robin Hood. 

3. They considered him a brave sea-captain. 
b. Define Indirect Object, etc. 

COMPOSITION VERY POOR. 

The work in composition is scarcely better. Although this subject is examined, it is treated, 
as has already been pointed out, as of quite subordinatejimportance in comparison with technical 
grammar. Although I inquired frequently and on many occasions when I was investigating 
other subjects, in no single classroom was I able to find a single piece of a pupil's work in written 
composition in the possession of the teacher. No literary or content value seemed to be attached 
by teachers or pupils to any of the latter's written work. Such work as teachers were able to 
secure from pupils for my inspection was presented in pads of the greatest variety in size, shape, 
and appearance, but uniformly of very poor paper. The appearance of these pads as a whole, 
and of the individual pieces of composition which they contained, was unattractive in the 
extreme — slovenly is not too strong a term to apply to most of this matter. 

There is no little evidence that attention in written composition is focused almost entirely 
on form, to the neglect of content. The instruction observed and pupil's written work strongly 
indicate this. Indeed, in the published course of study for the grammar grades the only direction 

iPage 166. 

20 



or suggestion regarding written composition strongly implies that correctness of form — which in 
practice almost invariably means correct spelling, correct use of capitals and marks of punctua- 

jJQjj constitutes the chief purpose of instruction on this subject. In the language prescription 

for Sixth A, Part Thirty-one, occurs the following direction, to which reference is made in every 
one of the succeeding twenty-three parts of the grammar course: 

'There should be regular exercise in written composition. The work should for the most 
part be impromptu, the writing being done in the schoolroom under the eye of the teacher. 

"The work should be criticised by having specimens placed on the blackboard. These 
specimens should then be made the subject of class criticism. All typical errors will be reached 
in this way, and the comments of the teacher will be better understood than her pencil marks 
upon the pupil's papers." 

"Impromptu work, followed by blackboard criticism of 'typical errors', does not constitute 
a method of precedure likely to result in developing individuality of thought and expression, in- 
dependence and self-confidence in giving expression to one's own ideas, and pride in the finished 
product of one's efforts. Predominance of attention to form, as has been abundantly demon- 
strated by schools that have tried it — and this is almost everywhere the prevailing method of 
teaching composition, it must be admitted — never produces even tolerably satisfactory formal 
results. This failure was evident in practically all the composition seen in the Portland schools — 
the form was as poor as the content. Composition might well be one of the most interesting 
and valuable studies of the elementary schools, serving almost as no other subject can to develop 
rich individuality, is evidently carried on as a routine class exercise; one teacher's practice of 
'occasionally looking at individual work when pupils get careless', is probably not confined to 
that one teacher. Composition, that may be an inspiration and opportunity, is all too evidently 
drudgery for pupils and teachers'." 

"LITERARY AND PRE-VOCATIONAL COURSES. 

Courses appropriate to this intermediate period are of two general types, which may be 
designated as literary and pre- vocational. As these names suggest, those of the former type 
are more abstract, bookish, and theoretical, while those of the latter are more concrete and im- 
mediately practical. The literary courses are more closely allied, in content and method, to the 
present grammar and the first year of the literary high school courses. 
The subjects composing the literary courses should be as follows: 
1. English: Literature, written and oral composition, and elements of grammar. * * * 

PURPOSE OF THE PRE-VOCATIONAL COURSES. 

The pre-vocational courses appropriate to this intermediate period should serve two ends, 
not dissimilar in their demands: (1) they should prepare for the vocational courses of the sec- 
ondary period those pupils who continue in school beyond the intermediate period; and (2) they 
should give those pupils who conclude their schooling with this period some definite and practical 
preparation for entrance into some particular field of usefulness. These prevocational courses 
should be distinguished from each other as well as from the literary courses by the immediate 
practical study which should be prominent in each of them. * * * Each one of these prevocational 
courses will involve the study of the following subjects, made concrete and practical and correlated 
with the practical subject that distinguishes the course: 

1. English: Composition and literature. * * * 

PUPIL'S CAPACITIES AND INTERESTS TESTED IN THE INTERMEDIATE STAGE. 

In addition to serving definitely the varied needs of individual boys and girls, as these have 
become evident previous to entrance upon this intermediate period, the variety and range of 
instruction offered in the literary and pre-vocational courses of this period should serve to test 
the interests and to bring out the special capacities of most of those pupils whose educational 
needs have not previously declared themselves, so that when the work of the secondary period is 
reached, it will be possible to determine intelligently, in the case of most pupils, what their sec- 
ondary course of study should be. While considerable beginnings in differentiation have been 
made in this intermediate period, so much of the instruction has been essentially common to all 
courses — the English, arithmetic, history, and geography — that any pupil whose capacity and 
interests make it advisable can change his course at any time during this intermediate period, 
or even at the beginning of the secondary period, and adjust himself without great difficulty to 
any course that promises greater benefit to him. 

21 



4. THE SECONDARY SCHOOL. 

SECONDARY INSTRUCTION DETERMINED BY LENGTH OF TIME PUPIL WILL 

CONTINUE IN SCHOOL. 

The instruction of the secondary period must carry much further the differentiation beg^un 
in the intermediate period, in order to meet the further differentiated needs of the youth in 
this secondary period. The length of time that a pupil will probably continue in school now 
becomes one of the most important considerations in determining what that pupil's instruction 
should be. Indeed, because the probable length of a pupil's schooling is usually, to a large 
extent, the resultant of that pupil's capacity and interests, as well as his economic circumstances, 
this factor of time may safely be given first consideration in determining, in a general way, the 
character of the course of instruction that will prove most beneficial. 

PREPARATORY AND VOCATIONAL COURSES OF WIDE RANGE. 

Hence it is that the wide range of secondary courses of instruction, adequate to the diverse 
needs of thousands of youth in this secondary period, naturally falls into two groups, which may 
be designated respectively as preparatory and vocational. The former group of courses, as their 
suggested designation implies, should prepare for admission to the work of higher institutions — 
colleges, universities, normal schools, and other schools for advanced special training — those 
students who are to continue their education beyond this secondary period. The latter group of 
courses, the vocational, should prepare for immediate, definite service — through a wide range of 
specifically practical instruction, adapted on the one hand to the wide range of individual capacity 
and interest, and on the other to the diversified needs of the community — those whose schooling 
IS to terminate with this secondary period. 

All complete courses of this period should be so planned as to call normally for three years 
work. Yet they should be flexible enough in arrangement and administration to meet individual 
capacity and conditions, especially permitting and encouraging part-time work, where circum- 
stances make this necessary, and in such cases extending over a longer period than three years. 
The vocational courses should be so arranged that pupils who leave them at any point, of necessity 
or otherwise, will find themselves prepared, in proportion to the time and effort that they have 
so far devoted to their training, to render service in their chosen field." (30) 

"REPORT OF THE SURVEY OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM OF SALT LAKE 

CITY, UTAH. 
Authorized by resolution of the Board of Education, May 4, 1915. 

SURVEY STAFF. 

Ellwood P. Cubberley, Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Junior University. Director of 

the Survey: Administration; Finances. 
James H. Van Sickle, Superintendent of City Schools, Springfield, Massachusetts. Course of 

Study; Instruction. 
Lewis M. Terman, Associate Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Junior University, School 

Buildings; Health Supervision; Physical Education. 

Jesse B. Sears, Assistant Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Junior University. Efficiency 

Tests. 
J. Harold Williams, Research Fellow, Leland Stanford Junior University. Progress of Pupils; 

Statistical Work; Drawings. 

Types of examination tests used. To show the type of examination given by the super- 
visors, and the mental qualities they are designed to test, we reproduce a few typical examination 
papers from the collection supplied us while at work in Salt Lake City. 

FINAL EXAMINATION— EIGHTH B CLASS. 
Group I 

1. Illustrate a. a phrase as subject of the sentence, b. a clause as object of a preposition, 
c. a co-ordinate clause, d. a phrase modifying a noun used as subjective complement. 



(30) Portland Survey, pp. 124-219. 

22 



2. Choose the proper word and fill in the blanks of the following sentences, also give reasons 
for your choice: 

a. Not one of the boys (was, were) there. 

b. The book (lay, laid) on the table yesterday. 

c. Deal (gentle, gently) with them. 

d. For you and (me, I) there are many opportunities. 

e. (Has, have) either of you an extra pencil? 

3. Diagram the following sentences: 

At the back of Mount Tipanogas, not fifty miles away, is a glacier exhibiting all 
the characteristics of ice streams. 

4. Use each of the following words first as a noun, then as an adjective, then as a verb: 
blind, sound, spring. 

5. Classify: a. words, b. sentences, c. phrases, according to use. 

Group II. 

6. Write the plural form of the following words: Tooth, Mary, Miss, Clark, German, 
baby, journey, chief, wolf, father-in-law. 

7. Give the principal parts of the following verbs: Go, sit, lie, dig, set, do, eat, come, lay. 

8. Account for the case form of the underlined pronouns in the following sentences: 

a. WE girls are going on an excursion. 

b. Did you see Mary and ME at the theater? 

c. Neither speaker had prepared HIS speech. 

d. I am in a higher class than SHE. 

e. The money belongs to US four boys. 

9. Write a sentence containing two subordinate clauses, one performing the office of an 
adjective, and the other the office of an adverb. 

10. Explain and illustrate the difference in meaning between the following words: 

At and in, between and among, besides and beside, by and with, in and into. 

Note that children compose in answering these questions. They are not analyzing the 
sentences of others. 

The quality of the grade supervision. * * * 

In another bulletin the following sound characterization of the use of grammar is given 
for the benefit of principals and teachers of seventh and eighth grades: 

The teaching of grammar must be justified by the educational results that are immediate 
rather than those remote. These results should be, a. clearer thinking, b. increased power to 
interpret language. 

It is better to select a few topics in grammar and to teach them well than endeavor to teach 
too many topics. Whenever the facts and principles being studied have no concrete meaning 
to the child they are not serving the educational purpose intended. Verbal memory has little 
place in teaching this subject. Classifications and definitions should follow concrete knowledge 
of many individual words or expressions and not precede this knowledge. In other words, they 
should grow out of the child's fund of information and his powers of comparison. 

Good points about the bulletin are: 

1. Flexibility — the supervisor realizes that conditions determine the remedies to be applied. 

2. Definiteness of directions. 

3. The ultimate end is never lost sight of. The various means suggested are always 
practical. They reflect supervisors who have studied the results of the teachers' work and who 
possess readiness and resourcefulness in suggesting remedies for difficulties. 

4. The insisting upon thoroughness, upon student power, not alone a mastery of facts, as 
an ultimate test of teaching is constantly emphasized. 

5. The human element in the directions should tend to make the teachers sympathetic 
and stimulating. 

6. The relation of subject to subject is well brought out in indicating supervisors who see 
all of the subjects as parts of a plan to develop a single consistent purpose. 

II. DESIRABLE EXTENSIONS. 

The Junior High School. The plan now well under way in Salt Lake City, by which grades 
seven, eight, and nine are organized departmentally as the Junior high school, is in line with 
progressive practice elsewhere. Already sixty-eight cities have such organizations, and many 

23 



more are contemplating this feature. These organizations differ as to the grades included, 
whether two or three; as to housing, whether in separate building, or with lower grades, or 
high school proper; and again as to subjects included in the course of study. Some common 
characteristics appear. After the sixth grade, pupils are allowed some choice among studies, they 
anticipate some of the work of the high school proper, and they are taught on the departmental 
plan. 

The plan as yet imperfectly developed. In Salt Lake City the organization calls ultimately 
for three grades, the seventh, eighth, and, as pupils of the two grades below accomplish work which 
calls for high school credits, the ninth. A good beginning has been made, and the plan merits 
full development. It seems to the survey, however, that instead of scattering the units of the 
organization throughout the city it would be better far, both financially and educationally, to 
bring the pupils of the Junior high school grades together in larger numbers. Since the schools 
throughout the city are now so crowded that rooms not intended for school use are being utilized 
as class rooms, it is evident that new buildings must be erected to relieve the congestion. The 
needed relief should be provided by erecting four or five new buildings expressly for the Junior 
high school work, leaving existing buildings for the use of grades one to six. This would make 
better grading possible and also provide larger classes, thus reducing the per capita cost of in- 
struction. It would also remove two grades, the seventh and eighth, from all existing buildings, 
in itself a gain of no small importance. 

The work cannot be properly developed in so many small scattered centers. But enough 
differentiation can be arranged to meet the varying needs of the children. At present pre- 
vocational needs of the children of Salt Lake City are not sufficiently provided for. A choice of 
German, Latin, or French is open to pupils, and in one center the arithmetic of the eighth grade 
has a commercial trend; but there is little provision for those non-literary pupils who, though 
not defective in intellect, are not sufficiently apt in dealing with symbols to get their education 
chiefly from books. Not only for these but also for another group of boys and girls, normal in 
every respect but who will inevitably leave school at an early age, courses should be offered which 
give definite industrial training. 

Nature and method of the composition test. The test, which is explained in the following 
paragraphs from a circular put in the hands of the teachers, was given in grades four to eight 
inclusive, in the 19 schools selected for the testing work. 

COMPOSITION TEST. 

1. Each teacher is requested to ask her children to write a composition for her on the 
following theme: 

'Suppose that you have twenty dollars, which you have given to spend. You have five 
friends, and you decide to spend it in such a manner as will give the most pleasure to each. Tell 
what you would do or buy for each friend. The amount spent for each friend need not be the 
same, but the total for the five must be twenty dollars.' 

2. The composition should be written with pen and ink on the regular writing paper. 

3. After the children are ready for writing, read the subject to them, give them a minute 
or two to ask questions, and as soon as you are sure that the children understand what they are 
to do, start them at writing. 

4. When the children have finished collect the papers, fasten those for each class together 
with a clip, and send to the office of the school principal. 

No teacher marked her own papers, hence the personal equation probably entered very 
slightly into the scoring, which was done by the use of the Hillegas scale for measuring the quality 
of English composition.* 

In all there were 3,043 compositions written, representing a sample of slightly more than 
16 per cent of the children in the elementary schools of the city. 

The results of the test. The results of this test are shown briefly in the following tables 
and diagram. 

In Table No. 18 a complete distribution of scores attained by each grade is shown, together 
with the median score attained by each grade. From this table it may be seen that the degree 
of eflficiency rises gradually from grade four to grade eight. That is, from this test it appears 



*Hillegas, Milo B. — A scale for the Measurement of Quality in English Composition by 
Young People. Published by Teachers College, Columbia University, 1912. 

24 



that the average child in the Salt Lake City schools, during the course of 4 years' training in 
English composition, may be expected to gain in efficiency the equivalent of two and one-half 
points on this scale, or at the rate of .6 point per year. According to the Butte Survey* the 
progress of a child in that city is at the rate of .45. 

Samples of average composition. In order that the reader may judge for himself of the 
quality of the work the schools are doing in composition, the children's papers from the different 
schools have been looked over and those papers from each grade which received the score nearest 
median (approximately the average) for the grade have been sorted out. From, these the following 
compositions have been selected as typical illustrations, not of the best or the poorest, but of 
the average composition from each grade tested. They are presented here exactly as written, 
spelled, and punctuated in the original, except that proper names have been omitted. * * * 

No. 4. GRADE 7B, SCORE 4.74 (WRITTEN BY A BOY 14 YEARS, 3 MONTHS). 

One sunny morning in May my five cousins who were on their way to see the fair at Frisco 
stopped on their way and came to see me. My father gave me twenty dollars to entertain them. 
I was busy thinking of the best way to do it. I finally decided to go to the Bingham Copper 
Mines. This was satisfactory to all and taking along a lunch we started off. 

When we got there it was noon and everybody was hungry so we opened up the lunch and 
ate until there was not a crumb left. Next we hired a guid to show us through the mines and 
what a sight we seen. There were walls of dirt seemingly covered with the yellow mettle. Our 
guid showed us where the elevators were on which they sent the copper to the top. Next he 
showed us the donkeys which hauled the dump cart to the elevators. After taking us through 
all the mines he showed us where the minors lived. 

Here our journey ended after each buying a souvenir we departed for home, each one satisfied 
with the way of spending twenty dollars. 

No. 5. GRADE 8B. SCORE 5.85. (WRITTEN BY A BOY, AGE ?) 



Dear J 

Two days ago uncle gave me twenty dollars, to get Christmas presents with. I was on my 
way down town, to get them, when I saw two ragged little boys. I stopped and said, to them, 
'Well, Johnny, what are you going to get for Chistmas.' 

'I aint going to get nothing this Christmas, for mama hasn't got any money.' Where do 
you live. 'Across the street in that wooden house,' answered the boy. 

You take this five dollars over to your mamma and then hurry back and I will take you 
up town. So I took them up town, and got them some warm clothes and then took them to a 
show. So I spent fifteen dollars on three of them. There was Mother and Father left, so I got 
father a shaving set which cost three dollars and a half and I got Mother some hadkerchiefs for 
a dollar and a half which took all my money. Merry Christmas. 

Your old friend, 

H— . 

On the formal side there are plenty of errors in these papers, in spelling, in punctuation, in 
sentence formation, etc., and one or two seem rather formal and dry. But in most of them there 
is evidence of some play of the imagination, and fairly free expression. Most of the vocabularies 
seem adequate, and in such details these samples seem to indicate that the composition work is 
fairly well taught. It must be remembered that these are but average compositions, and not 
compositions selected because of their special merit. 

Conclusions and recommendations. It should be said then in conclusion: * * * 

4th. From the compositions written there is ample evidence that the excellent aims for 
English work, as set forth in the printed course of study, are being achieved, and that many of the 
common errors of teaching the formal and technical aspects of English work are being successfully 
avoided. 

5th. It is recommended that a portion of the time now devoted to formal spelling drill 
be given over, in the early grades, to the broader work in English, and that by the use of ungraded 
rooms, smaller classes, and more elastic methods of promotion, the very bright and the very 
dull pupils be given more adequate attention than is either possible or economical under the 
present classification. * * * 



*Report of the Survey of the School System of Butte, Montana. Published by the Board 
of Education, 1914. 

25 



The use of standardized tests. A final word may be said about the use of standard tests. 
First, we desire to commend the use the supervisors and principals have been making of these 
modern educational tools. Teachers should become familiar with such scale and tests as have 
been used here, not with how they were made, but with how to use them. The teacher who is 
able to measure her own product, or to have it measured by the supervisor, will develop confidence 
in her methods or discover reasons for changing them. 

As an instrument in supervision, tests are indispensable. Of course testing can never 
displace constructive helpful criticism, but standardized tests furnish a rational basis for such 
criticism, without which the best supervision is handicapped. So far as was observed they are 
being properly used by the principals and supervisors, but they may even go further in displacing 
the ordinary form of school examination". (31) 

In the Vocational Educational Survey of Richmond, Virginia, I find the 
following indicated: 

" 'Academic work (approximately half time). English: Language work based on reading, 
much of the reading to bear upon industries: Composition, dealing with the occupational work of 
the school, business correspondence, business forms, spelling, and penmanship.' 

The printing industry seems to have a somewhat special course in English but others avail 
themselves of this course also. The following brief outlines will suggest the kinds of topics to 
be studied and the methods of treatment. The outline is somewhat similar to the Technical 
Course in English. 

1. Grammar and word study: * * * 

2. Punctuation: * =*= * 

3. Capitals and small capitals: * * * 

4. Division of words: * * * 

5. Compound words: * * * 

6. Abbreviations and signs: * * * 

7. Uses of italics: * * * 

8. Proof reading: * * * 

9. Preparation of printers copy:" (32) 

As to reports from the United States Bureau of Education the following 
is taken from "A Brief Summary of the Forthcoming Report of the National 
Joint Committee of the Reorganization of High-School English" (which is 
being printed at the present time by the United States Bureau of Education). 
This report shows the point of view of the Committee. Among the eight 
points as given will be found some essentials to success in teaching high school 
English, such as (1) a properly trained teacher, a reorganized school system, etc. 
The points are as follows: 

1. "The college-preparatory function of the high school is a minor one. Hence the high- 
school course in English should be organized primarily with reference to basic personal and social 
needs. School life that is genuine and hearty is the only satisfactory preparation for either "life" 
or college. 

2. The chief problem of articulation is with the elementary school and can best be solved 
by regarding the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades as the first stage of high-school work. 

3. A varying social background must now be assumed and provided for. Nevertheless, the 
chief elements of the English course are universal and may furnish typical experiences for all. 

4. English is not merely a formal subject, capable of being mastered at a certain point in 
the curriculum and then dropped. Life and language grow together; hence the study of English 
should continue throughout th^ school period. Only so much of technique should be taught at any 
one time as will actually enable pupils to improve their use and understanding of the vernacular. 

5. Language is social in nature; therefore the study of English should appeal to pupils by 
reason of actual social use and recognized social value. Composition should be regarded as a 



(31) Salt Lake City Survey, pp. 113-146. 

(32) U. S. Department of Labor, pp. 287-289. 



26 



sincere attempt to communicate ideas, and literature, both classic and modern, should become 
an expression of the pupil's own interests and ideals and an interpretation of his own experience. 

6. The study of English as a training for efficient work should be distinguished from the 
study of it as a preparation for the wholesome enjoyments of leisure. This will make possible that 
co-operation of all departments which is essential in establishing good habits of reading, of thought, 
and of expression. 

7. The conducting of a school paper and the organization of literary and dramatic clubs 
should be encouraged and directed because of the opportunity they afford for free play for the 
mind and practice in expression. The spirit of the club — and of the laboratory and the shop as 
well — should animate the English classroom itself. This is now much hindered in the cities by 
the excessive number of pupils imposed upon the teacher. A second limitation to free, individual 
effort is found in the absences of suitable libraries and reading-rooms. Good English work requires 
adequate equipment. 

8. The supreme essential to success in high-school English, however, is neither the course 
nor the conditions, but the properly trained teacher. He should be a professional imbued with 
the amateur spirit, having good scholarship, mature judgment, rational educational standards, 
and objective methods of measuring results". (33) 

The Report of the Committee of Ten on the Study of English embraced 
the following: English Language, English Grammar, Composition, Rhetoric 
and Composition. As stated before in this thesis their verdict was that: 
"The main direct objects of the teaching of English in schools seem to be 
two: (1) 'to enable the pupil to understand the expressed thoughts of others 
and to give expression to thoughts of his own; and (2) to cultivate a taste 
for reading, to give the pupil some acquaintance with good literature, and to 
furnish him with the means of extending that acquaintance.' " 

Thus it seems, that the fundamental divisions of the English curriculum 
are the existing conditions of to-day as well as of 1894. The main direct 
objects to-day also are similar. 

In order to better ascertain the condition of English Language and Liter- 
ature in the schools of the United States, two questionnaires were sent out 
called Questionnaire "A" and Questionnaire "B". Questionnaire '*A", which 
was sent to City Superintendents of Schools, read as follows: 

Questionnaire **A". 

Under the direction of the Department of English, Graduate School of 
Education, University of Nebraska, I am gathering data on the Correlation 
of Vocational and Liberal Education through English Language and Literature 
for a six-three-three High School curriculum. 

I shall greatly appreciate any information you may be able to give me 
by letter or printed matter which may assist in properly unifying Vocational 
and Liberal Education through English Language and Literature. 

Please indicate: 

1. Name of city. 2. Your name. 3. Name of school. 



(33) A Brief Summary of the Report, pp. 2-3. 

.27 



Questions. 

I. What preparation do you expect of pupils entering the first year 
high school (Grade VII) as to: 

1. Technical English. 

a. The extent of their vocabulary? 

b. Their knowledge of English Grammar? 

c. Punctuation and capitalization? 

d. Sentence structure, etc.? 

2. Their power of oral and written expression? 

3. What readings and studies in English should be accomplished? 

II. What should be accomplished in the first year junior high school 
English (Grade VII) as to: 

1. Technical English. 

a. Errors in speech? 

b. Grammar? 

2. What facts, principles and laws of composition should be learned? 

3. What particular things should the pupil be trained to do in oral 
and written composition? 

4. What vocational and cultural readings and studies should be. 
required? 

III. What should be the character of the work in English as to: 

1. Material used, i. e., exercises or illustrative material? 

2. The kinds of subjects for compositions? 

3. Kinds of work, i. e., letter-writing, verse writing, book-reviews, 
essays, debating, etc.? 

IV. How do you test the work from month to month: 

1. For increase of knowledge? 

2. For growth in power of expression? 

3. For increase in the development of sensibility? 

V. How do you judge of the work at the end of the year: 

1. For knowledge of language structure, grammar and the principles 
of composition? 

2. For power of expression, both oral and written? 

3. For interest in good books and the ability to read them intelligently? 

VI. What is your purpose or aim in the six-three-three high school 
as to: 

1. Teaching English in the junior high school (Grades VII, VIII, IX) 
as a whole? 

2. Teaching EngHsh in the senior high school (Grades X, XI, XII) as 
a whole? 

3. What vocational and cultural subject matter (studies and readings) 
do you use in the senior and junior high school with reference to 
the correlation of Vocational and Liberal Education through English 
Language and Literature? 



28 



VII. Do you approve of supervised study in English Language and 
Literature as to: 

1. Discovering the capacities and aptitudes of pupils for English? 

2. Recognizing individual differences in pupils? 

VIII. Ho-w far does English Language and Literature in the modern 
high school supply the needs of adolescents? 

IX. Have you a Vocational Bureau in your school? To what extent 
is English considered, in connection with this bureau? 

X. Additional Comments. 

P. S.— Please request the head of the Department of English to answer 
these questions. 

To these questions the following repHes were given: 

To the question I, 1, a. The answers were: "Such as you would expect 
them to have by careful following of the course of study up to this time"; 
"Many pupils have a vocabulary of not more than a thousand words, prob- 
ably"; "I cannot answer. It varies with NationaHties. I do not know that 
this has been measured"; "See 'Course of Study' ". 

To question I, 1, b. One said, "Very limited; less, much less than 
course of study would seem to indicate; another replied, "Knowledge of 
Grammar is elementary"; Another said, "Simplest elements"; and one said, 
"They have a pretty fair knowledge of Technical grammar". 

To question I, 1, c. There were various answers. One was, "Uses of 
capitals, periods, question mark and quotation mark are known. This knowl- 
edge, however, is not always put to use"; another said, "Very good for their 
age"; and still another said, "Ordinary uses of period, comma, and interroga- 
tion point and the Elementary uses of capitals". 

To question I, 1, d. Two repHed, "Simple, compound, and complex 
sentences"; one said, "Just fair"; another replied, "They know the three 
kinds of sentences, but use of the complex sentence is limited". 

To question I, 2. The answers were various. One was, "Most have 
had good training in topical recitations, from biography, story telling, and 
above all in geography". Another said, "Some come from homes rich in 
supplementary material, and these are rich in ideas and speech, if there has 
been any sympathetic relation between the elders and the children"; another 
replied, "Very limited"; still others said, "Varies widely with home environ- 
ment"; "To speak and write in such a way as to make their meaning clear". 

To question I, 3. The repHes were as follows: "The aim is shown in 
the Course of Study. Some schools are rich in supplementary material, but 
many are poor. Limitation to a series of reading books, just a little too 
difficult, has deadly results upon reading habits"; "Longfellow, heroic poems, 
selected poems of Nature, poems of patriotism, and prose hero stories are 
used and myths"; "Interpretation of poems and pictures found in their 
readers, memory gems, short selections of prose and poetry, preferably by 
local authors, and dealing with local history". One replied, "We are now 
discussing this phase". 

To question II, 1, a. The answers were, "Recognition of errors in mates, 

29 



and as heard outside of the schoolroom in home or street, steadily asked with 
increasing sensitiveness"; "These should be catalogued and cared for"; 
"Disagreement of subject and predicate; confusion of adjective and adverb — 
Forms of plural nouns"; "A beginning is made with the grosser errors". 
To question II, 1, b. There were various answers. One said, "Strong 
verbs and use of pronouns, the main subjects of practice"; another said, 
"The general outlines without the study of fine points, such as infinitive, 
etc."; and another repHed, "We complete the subject of grammar in the last 
half of the first year. Especial emphasis is placed on the verb". 

To question II, 2. The replies were as follows: "A broader use of the 
complex sentence should be acquired. A beginning should be made in para- 
graphing and paragraph development. Transposition of sentences for the 
sake of smoothness should be touched. Narration and Description as forms 
should be learned " ; " Develop the paragraph idea. Teach the form of personal 
business letters, informal notes of invitation, acceptance and declination"; 
"The mechanics. Then set them to writing. Pupil should be given eyes 
and sense of arrangement". 

To question II, 3. One replied, "They should be trained to give short 
oral stories, descriptions, etc., without notes. This should eliminate some 
errors of spoken English. In written work they should be trained to write 
complete sentences. They should be able to write one page stories, and 
descriptions fairly correct as to paragraphing, speUing, punctuation, and 
diction"; another said, "Greater readiness in the use of all material. 
Geography offers the richest field"; another, "Avoidance of and and so habit 
in oral and written composition. Place a period at the end of every complete 
sense thought. Recognition of the distinction between what is a complete 
sentence, and what is not"; and still another said, "Get facts to them. 
Arrange them in interesting form". 

To question II, 4. Answers were as follows: "Our classes in Com- 
mercial English read current magazines, including advertisements. Especial 
attention is given to System, and Saturday Evening Post. Books, i. e., fiction 
deahng with business hfe should be used"; "Whatever interests chiefly"; 
"At least one good book should be read each month, and a report thereon 
made". 

To question III, 1. One rephed: "Use 1. Examples of the Text. 
2. Original examples of teachers. 3. Illustrations from readers and other texts. 
4. The themes of the pupils". Another said, "Exercises and illustrative 
material should be based on pupils' experience"; another replied, "I can't 
say". 

To question III, 2. The answers varied. One replied, "Out of the 
liveliest experience the children have; with some, it will come from the play- 
ground, with others from books and reading"; another wrote, "Subjects for 
composition should be drawn largely from pupils' experiences, descriptions of 
pets, vacation trips, home work, etc."; another replied as follows: "I should 
use wholly concrete subjects at first. Then historical, imaginative, etc."; 
and still another said, "Dictation for capitalization and punctuation. Repro- 
duction; Narration of incidents, stories, paraphrasing of poems. Biographical 
sketches of characters in history, Interpretation of pictures and poetry". 

30 



To question III, 3. The answers were: "Much letter writing; verse 
writing if it be spontaneous and natural for the individual; no book reviews 
further than condensation of story or other subject matter. Great interest 
can be secured in oral work through discussion. A first-class recitation is 
always a debate"; "Some work might be done in business and social letter 
writing. We do this in the second year, however, verse writing and especially 
essay writing, may well wait. Book reviews, if given, should be brief. Critical 
judgment is not abundant yet. Debating arouses keen interest. Subjects 
should be carefully chosen, that facts alone may be dealt with, and theorizing 
and wrangling may be avoided"; "Original themes deahng with experiences, 
which are, or should be, a part of the child's life; with events chiefly local, of 
which the child has, or should have, knowledge. No verse writing, book 
reviews, or essays are written. No debates required. An oral report in the 
nature of a summary of a book each month is required." 

To question IV, 1. The answers were as follows: "Monthly tests"; 
"We do not do this successfully"; "Usual way"; "The test at the end of 
each six week period usually consists of a written examination dealing with the 
vital parts of the subject matter of the period". 

To question IV, 2. One said, "A comparison of written Themes"; 
another said, "Usual way"; and still another said, "Frequently the examina- 
tion mentioned under 2 is graded -as an exercise in English. Pupils are in- 
formed of this and are given time to write with the same care used in preparing 
themes, also, the themes, from week to week, serve to show this growth". 

To question IV, 3. Only two answers were given: 1st, "Usual way"; 
2nd, "The selection of books for home reading from a general recommended 
list indicates this development to a certain extent". 

To question V, 1. Replies were as follows: "We give general test"; 
"Examinations"; "In all subjects where possible, by comparison of early 
work with last work, early work having been saved for such purpose"; "The 
final examination and the last few themes, show the use of this knowledge. 
Questions of fact are covered in the subject matter of this examination". 

To question V, 2. These answers were given: "By the teacher's judg- 
ment based on a daily record of school performance, for it is assumed that 
she has memory and sense"; "Can't say"; "Examinations"; "The form 
of the final examination. When suflScient time is allowed — or rather, when 
questions are sufficiently short — -and the later themes test the power of written 
expression". 

To question V, 3. Three replied as follows: "No formal way"; "Some 
effort is made to keep track of library lists, and summer reading"; another 
said, "Home reading is given some credit. A large list of desirable books is 
offered. The books which the pupils choose are an index to interest and 
ability". 

To question VI, 1. Two answers were given: "To teach, to economize 
English"; "The aims laid down for various courses are 'To arouse interest 
in literature for composition. To master the main facts of technical grammar. 
To appeal to and to stimulate the pupil's interest; to secure correctness; 
and to establish elementary standards of tests' ". 

31 



To question VI, 2. Three replied. One said, "Same thing"; another 
said, "If you cannot guess from the spirit of what has been written above 
then it is useless to write further". The other said, "To develop ideals of 
citizenship and patriotism. To develop an individual style and discriminating 
literary taste, etc." 

To question VI, 3. One said, "I do not understand this question". 

To question VII, 1. These replies were given: "Depends upon the 
Supervisor"; "Yes"; "No"; "Of course"; "The greatest possibilities for super- 
vised study lie in English composition. I see little value in it for the study 
of literature, except in directing outside reading. If conditions allow special 
work in reading, much, of course, may be done for the individual". 

To question Vfl, 2. Two said, "Yes"; one said, "No"; the others 
replied, "Of course, it certainly should be helpful in discovering individual 
differences". 

To question VIII. One replied as follows: " Danger of too much difficulty 
in selection used; also danger of making subje3t too soft to secure so-called 
interest"; another replied, "Just fairly well"; one said, "To a very limited 
degree"; and still another said, "Their chief needs are these: Correctness 
in writing and speaking; a taste for the better forms of literature. I know 
of no school which meets these needs wholly. All, I think make a marked 
improvement, especially in writing". 

To question IX. Two answered, "No"; one replied as follows, "English 
is considered in connection with nearly every subject and a monthly rating 
in English is given by all teachers of other subjects than English"; another 
replied, "Our vocational work so far has been such as the conventional courses 
in commerce, manual training, normal training, etc." 

To Additional Comments, there were no replies. 

As a partial survey to Questionnaire "A" I find there w^ere very 
few "Junior High Schools" reported. Most of the superintendents re- 
ported "No Junior High Schools" but sent "Courses of Study" from which 
certain deductions could be made which will be stated in the final summary. 
In the list sent out, I find in the returns the following junior high schools 
mentioned: "Binford Junior High School", Richmond, Virginia; "Detroit 
Junior- High School", Detroit, Michigan; "Washington Junior High School", 
Rochester, New York; "Junior Course", Hope Street High School (a small 
class), Providence, Rhode Island; " Prevocational and Junior High School", 
Lincoln, Nebraska; "The Intermediate Schools" (VII-VIII-IX Grades) of 
Berkeley, California, are really Junior High Schools, only a difference of 
name exists. I find in my research work that there are probably about one 
hundred "Junior High Schools", many saying they are preparing the way for 
this kind of school. 

To the questions the City Superintendents from the following cities 
replied: 

Ann Arbor, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan. 

Atlanta, Georgia. Des Moines, Iowa. 

Berkeley, California. Hampton, Virginia. 

Denver, Colorado. Kansas City, Missouri. 

32 



Kansas City, Kansas. Rockford, Illinois. 

Lincoln, Nebraska. Richmond, Virginia. 

Minneapolis, Minnesota. Spokane, Washington. 

Muskogee, Oklahoma. Rochester, New York. 

Nashville, Tennessee. Topeka, Kansas. 

Omaha, Nebraska. Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. 

Portland, Oregon, Washington, District of Columbia. 

Providence, Rhode Island. Winona, Minnesota. 

A list of some of the "Junior High Schools", or "Intermediate Schools" 
that I found in my research work, besides those just mentioned are as follows: 
Boise, Idaho. Los Angeles, California. 

Dayton, Ohio. Madison, Wisconsin. 

Decatur, Illinois. Oakland, California. 

Duluth, Minnesota. Ogden, Utah. 

Evansville, Indiana. Passadena, California. 

Grand Rapids, Michigan. Quincy, Illinois. 

Houston, Texas. Richmond, Indiana. 

Kalamazoo, Michigan. Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Kansas City, Kansas. Topeka, Kansas. 

There was apparently such a similarity in the answers to Questionnaire 
"A" that there is little need of a summary. The greatest defect was shown 
as regards Vocational Subject Matter, and the development of the sensibilities. 
From the course of study sent of the Berkeley, California, "Intermediate 
Schools" (Grade VII-VIII-IX) I find that these three years of English 
take two definite forms: Structural English, or Language Study (Grammar, 
SpelHng and Composition); and Cultural English, or Reading and Literature. 
The grades are designated as Low Seventh, High Seventh, etc. 

Questionnaire *'B" 

In order to learn whether English is well taught from the business point 
of view and how to remedy it, if not so taught, a form of questions called 
Questionnaire "B" was sent out to Commercial Clubs. This was done chiefly, 
because the Commercial Clubs recommend pupils for vocational work and there 
is a somewhat general complaint among business peoples as to the inability 
of pupils so recommended to use English accurately and fluently. The 
Questionnaire read as follows: 

Questionnaire **B'*. 

I. What is the Attitude of Employers of Commercial or Vocational 
Help towards English Language and Literature as to: 

1. Whether the pupils' inability to use the English language effectively 
in business is not a defect? 

2. Whether English will yield the boy or girl a social return? 

3. What a business man has a right to expect from a high school 
graduate with reference to English? 

33 



4. Whether English as given in the high school is inefficient? How 
remedy it? 

5. What constitutes good "Business English"? 

6. Whether both a vocationally trained child and a culturally trained 
one should have a minimum amount of vocational and cultural 
training in English Language and Literature? 

7. Whether the educational requirements for employment certificates 
of children should show that they have an average ability to read, 
write, and speak English? 

8. Additional Comments. 
The replies were as follows: 

To question I, L There were various answers, five said, "Yes"; six, 
"Decidedly so"; all of the others considered it a very serious defect. 

To question I, 2. Seven replied, "Yes"; others said, "It will"; while 
still others said, "Unquestionably so"; the rest replied as follows: "In an 
English speaking nation, what could be of greater advantage than to know 
one's own language"? "Mastery of English fundamentals, is the first and 
broadest vocational subject, and wages depend on this as directly as on any 
other vocational accomplishment". 

To question I, 3. Seven answered, "Ability to speak, write, and spell the 
English language correctly"; other replies were, "Correct response to em- 
ployer, and customer, and correct usage of English in correspondence"; "A 
high school graduate should be able to speak, write, and punctuate with 
facility. It is absolutely essential, for the successful selling or promoting of 
his own, or the other man's service or goods". 

To question I, 4. There was a great difference of opinions. The majority 
agreeing that it is inefficient, as m.any high school graduates are poor spellers, 
and know very little about how to construct a sentence correctly, or even 
paragraph correctly. As to the remedy, some of the replies were: "Too 
much attention paid to Literary English, without special emphasis, on Business 
English"; "Better equipped instructors at higher salaries"; "The solution 
is up to the University and the teacher". 

To question I, 5. The replies w^ere as follows: Four referred to question 3. 
Others said, "Good Business English is not different from any other kind of 
good Enghsh"; "A good background in English grammar, literature and com- 
position, with proper emphasis on letter-writing, paragraphing, punctuation, 
and spelling are necessary"; "Good vocabulary, simplicity, directness, clear- 
ness". 

To question I, 6. The majority answered "Yes", and others said, "In 
both cases"; other replies were as follow^s: "Not a minimum, but a maximum 
amount of training in the English language"; "A vocationally trained child 
should have a maximum amount of vocational, and cultural training in Eng- 
lish literature"; "By all means, combination of the two, most valuable"; 
"Business men do not see the need for any great difference between the train- 
ing vocationally of children, and the culturally trained, for they think that 
all should have good command of the common tools of language including 
ability to write a clear, direct, simple business letter, and the habit of reading 

34 



general literature and appreciating it. It is just as good for the child voca- 
tionally trained, as the one culturally trained". 

To question I, 7. Nearly all replied ''Yes"; "By all means". In 
addition to these one said, "A certificate should imply, that he has an average 
ability to read, write, and speak English correctly". 

To question I, 8. Additional Comments. — The few comments are as 
lollows: "I do not think the average business man, unless he has given special 
consideration to these questions, is qualified to pass an opinion, worthy of 
much consideration". — (St. Paul, Minnesota.) 

"The experience of nearly all mechanics is, that they were not taught 
enough mathematics, or the right kind. Then, they regret their inability to 
express themselves, either on paper, or in speech". — ^(Sioux City, Iowa.) 

"If the public high schools placed greater stress on a thorough training 
in English language and literature, it would prove of much greater benefit, 
at least to the student who enters the business world, than the study of Latin 
and Greek, or higher mathematics. Because a thorough training in English 
would pave the way for further development in later life and create a desire 
for learning, which too often terminates, when the student leaves school. 
The answers given to your questions are, of course, merely a matter of personal 
opinion, based upon observation of associates in the business world". — (Oak- 
land, California.) 

"Please send me a copy of your conclusions". — (Little Rock, Arkansas.) 

"More direction in practical teaching at the cost of (by elimination) some 
departmental instruction which is valueless (practically) to students in after 
life".— (Rockford, Illinois.) 

"Such changes must be made in our high curriculums that will give to 
the employer graduates that have at least the rudiments of reading, writing 
and to speak the English as it should be, with a heavy emphasis upon spelling, 
together with not so much a vocational training, as an ability to do things 
correctly and with an underlying mind foundation that permits them to 
grasp ordinary business principles". — (Sandusky, Ohio.) 

"As a former high school instructor, especially in 'Commercial Corre- 
spondence', I would say that the poor English students turned out from the 
high school are due not from a lack of facilities but from lack of teaching 
ability and method. It can be improved greatly. Actual work and less 
rules, especially rules that they will never apply in actual practice, would 
greatly help this movement for better English". — (Elgin, Illinois.) 

"This is my personal opinion, and of course can be greatly enlarged. 
I am answering these questions with the understanding that the boy or girl 
expects to enter a business office. English training is not so essential for 
tb'* boy or girl who is to do manual labor". — (Denver, Colorado.) 

"I find that some merchants do not seem to take into consideration the 
abihty of their clerks to speak and write English correctly. The reason for 
this can be easily explained. They never received such training themselves 
and are not progressive enough to serve the best trade. The merchants who 
are abreast of the times, progressive, and alert, are also anxious that their 
clerks make a good impression upon their trade and in order to do this they 

35 



realize that the clerk must be able to converse in good English". — (Kearney, 
Nebraska.) 

The letter from the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce I quote in full, 
as it seems very much to the point: 

"1. Business men regard inabihty to use the English language, together 
with inability to figure accurately, as the greatest single defect in our American 
education. 

2. Mastery of English fundamentals is the first and broadest vocational 
subject, and wages depend on this as directly as on any other vocational 
accomplishment. 

3 and 4. High school English partly remedies the defects of the grade 
schools in the mastery of the tools of language, and markedly increases the 
general intelligence. Many leading houses are trying to make it a rule to 
employ only high school graduates. Yet the high school graduate needs still 
serious training on the fundamentals of English. 

5. Good "Business English" first of all requires ability to spell near the 
100% point the list of words commonly used in letter writing, a habit of 
correctness (grammatical) in speaking and in writing letters, abihty to punc- 
tuate intelligently, and power to write a letter in simple, direct, plain language, 
with a certain human quality that will win the customer. But business men 
feel these ought to be mastered by the end of the 8th grade, or in the first 
year in the high school, and students who go to the later years of the high 
school ought to have the broad intelHgence that general cultural reading 
develops, and also some knowledge of the practical psychology of sales letter 
writing, advertising and personal salesmanship, with good training in talking 
well. 

6. Business men do not see the need for any great differentiation between 
the training of vocationally trained children and culturally trained, for they 
think that all should have good command of the "common tools of language", 
including abihty to write a clear, direct, simple business letter, and the habit 
of reading general literature and appreciating it. It is just as good for the 
child vocationally trained as the one culturally trained. 

7. Business men have thought very little about certificates and the hke, 
but would naturally be inclined to consider it an uncommonly good idea if 
school pupils might come to them with some evidence of standard command 
of English, or some measure of ability in which they would have confidence, 
such as an outside test. 

I would be very glad to learn the results of your study. 

Very truly yours, 

C. R. Bebble, 
Manager, Civic and Industrial Department". 

To these questions the following clubs replied: 
Association of Commerce: St. Paul, Minnesota. 
Chamber of Commerce: Roanoke, Virginia. 
Chamber of Commerce: Rockford, Illinois. 
Chamber of Commerce: Council Bluffs, Iowa. 

36 



Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce: Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Columbia Chamber of Commerce: Columbia, South Carolina. 

Commercial Club: Elgin, Illinois. 

Commercial Club: Sioux City, Iowa. 

Commercial Club: Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Commercial Club: Fargo, North Dakota. 

Denver Civic and Commercial Association: Denver, Colorado. 

Hannibal Commercial Club: Hannibal, Missouri. 

Jackson Chamber of Commerce: Jackson, Michigan. 

Kearney Commercial Club: Kearney, Nebraska. 

Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce: Los Angeles, California. 

Oakland Chamber of Commerce: Oakland, Cahfornia. 

Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Sandusky Federated Commercial Club: Sandusky, Ohio. 

Seattle Chamber of Commerce: Seattle, Washington. 

Washington Chamber of Commerce: Washington, District of Columbia. 

A summary of Questionnaire "B" may be stated as follows: 
Questionnaire "B" reveals conditions with regard to Business English 
that calls for immediate reform for these reasons: 

The pupil's inability to use the English language effectively in business is 
considered a very serious defect because the proper use of English will yield 
him an economic and a social return. A high school pupil should be able to 
speak and write correctly and with facility. It is essential for the successful 
selling or promoting of his own or the other man's service or goods. He should 
possess a vocabulary which enables him to express his thoughts forcefully 
and efficiently. The English as given in the high school is extremely inefficient. 
Some of the causes given for this are the need of: 

"Better and more specific text-books; better equipped instructors at higher salary; a lack 
of appreciation on the part of the pupil of the necessity of such training, and last but not least 
the "fault hes with what is taught or the method of teaching for the results are not happy". 

Good "Business" English should enable a pupil to express himself in 
such a way that he may be understood where various shades of meaning might 
place a different phase upon the different business transactions. A voca- 
tionally trained pupil and a culturally trained one should have a minimum 
amount of vocational and cultural training in English Language and Literature, 
as a combination of the two are very valuable in order to make him a well 
developed person. He should have the ability to read, write and speak 
English efficiently before he secures an employment certificate, for in an 
English speaking nation, what is of greater worth than to know one's own 
language? 

In the Outline for Vocational Guidance through English Composition 
some of the themes mentioned were: Vocational Ethics; Social Ethics; and 
Civic Ethics. These grade themes were for the high school pupils. As there 

37 



is a close relation, in many respects, between what we may call "High School 
Ethics" and "College Ethics", I cite the following on "College Ethics": 

"A refreshing series of ethical waves have recently sv/ept over our country, resulting in a 
purging of the commercial, political and social atmosphere, creating a new type of moral sense; 
the wording of this theme suggests, however, that the crusade against existing evils has penetrated 
less deeply into collegiate circles than into the arena of the business world. The phrase 'college 
ethics', seems to imply that the man so fortunate as to be registered in a college, may be governed 
by ethical law unlike that outside the classic halls of learning, that the Golden Rule does not 
apply to the gownsmen in the same way as to the townsmen. * * * A teacher's power is infinitely 
more in what he is, than what he teaches. 'How can I hear what you sny', said Emerson, 'when 
what you are is continually thundering in my ears? ' It is this contact of student life with that 
of the faculty that counts for more than all else in the morals of our institutions. Really the 
strongest lessons that we teach are the lessons we do not teach, but those that emanate from our 
personality. * * * History is replete with examples of such teachers, among them Thomas Arnold 
of Rugby stands pre-eminently; the secret of Arnold's marvelous power lay not in his superior 
academic training, but in the fact that his heart throbbed with greatness and goodness which 
reached out and touched and moulded the lives of his boys, whose sports and studies he shared. 
Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke, by her consistent life, ever held before her young women the 
ideals of a fine, noble womanhood; so completely were these ideals ingrained in the lives of these 
students that they reflected them everywhere they went in after life. It is this subtle influence 
of heart upon heart, and soul upon soul that counts for ethics in the college halls, without which 
all formal instruction is worthless. Such has been the influence of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, 
Aquinas, Erasmus, Savonarola, Pestalozzi, Arnold, Mary Lyon and a galaxy of others who have 
lived and taught down through the ages. With such teachers, the ethical life of our colleges 
will revive and send out such a moral force as will eliminate the evils of the commercial, political 
and social world against which legislation is now directed". (13) 

I. What Some Practical Workers say about English. 

1. The teachers of the Horace Mann School write as follows: 

"The study of English naturally occupies an important place in the school program — Regard- 
ing it as the most efficient means of culture at our command, we make it the 'core', as Dr. Nicholas 
Murray Butler styles it, of our curriculum, devoting more time to it than to any other subject, 
and considering it the chief standard for measuring the progress and ability of our pupils. 

Our aim is the obvious one — to train the children to use their mother-tongue more effectively 
in speaking and writing, and to gain some knowledge and appreciation of its literature. In school- 
room practice the subject groups itself as follows: 

1. Reading and Literature. 

2. Composition. 

3. Language Work and Grammar". (41) 

2. Hall in Adolescence and Literature says: 

"I am persuaded that QuintiUian was right when he declared that the simple reading of 
great works, such as national epics 'will contribute more to the unfolding of students than all 
t he treatises of all the rhetoricians that ever wrote.' At the dawn of adolescence I am convinced 
that there is nothing more wholesome for the material of English study than that of the early 
mythic period in Western Europe. I refer to the literature of the Arthuriad and the Sangrail, 
the stories of Parsifal, Tristram, Isolde, Galahad, Gawain, Geraint, Siegfried, Brunhilde, Roland, 
the Cid, Orlando, Lancelot, Tannhauser, Beowulf, Lohengrin, Robin Hood, and Rolando. This 
material is more or less closely connected in itself, although falling into large groups. Much of it 
bottoms on the Nibelungen and is connected with the old Teutonic mythology running back to 
the gods of Asgard. We have here a vast body of ethical material, characters that are almost 
colossal in their proportions, incidents thrilling and dramatic to a degree that stirs the blood and 
thrills the nerves. It is a quarry where Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spencer, Scott, Tennyson, Ibsen, 
and scores of artists in various lines have found subject-matter. The value of this material 
makes it almost Biblical for the early and middle teens, and is increased, from whatever point 



(13) Fordyce, pp. 71-79. 

(41) Teacher's College Record, p. 143. 



38 



of view we scrutinize it, for this purpose. In a sense, it is a kind of New Testament of classical 
myths. * * * Morals and ethics, which are never so inseparable as at this period, are here found 
in normal union. * * * 

This material educates the heart at an age when sentiment is predominant. * * * Hero worship 
is developed by a role of noble deeds, a castle album of portraits of heroes, the reading together 
of heroic books, the offering of ranks in the peerage, and the sacred honor of the perilous for ath- 
letic, scholarly, or self-sacrificing attainments. 

Some would measure the progress of culture by the work of reinterpreting on even higher 
planes the mystic tradition of a race, and how this is done for youth is a good criterion of pedagogic 
progress. 

This spirit is organized in and its fitness shown in the growth and success of the Knights of 
King Arthur, an unique order of Christian knighthood for boys.i based upon the romantic hero- 
loving, play-constructing, and imaginative instincts which ripen at about fourteen. Its purpose 
is to bring back to the world, and especially to its youth, the spirit of chivalry, courtesy, deference 
to womanhood, recognition of the noblesse oblige and Christian daring of that kingdom of knight- 
liness which King Arthur promised that he would bring back when he returned from Avalon. 
'In this order he appears again.' It is found in the model of a college Greek letter fraternity, 
with satisfaction for the love of ritual, mystery, and parade." 

And again he says: 

"By general consent, both high school and college youth in this country are in an advanced 
stage of degeneration in the command of this the world's greatest organ of the intellect, and that 
despite the fact that the study of English often continues from primary into college grades, that 
no topic counts for more, and that marked deficiencies here often debars from all other courses. 
Every careful study of the subject for nearly twenty years shows deterioration, and Professor 
Shurman, of Nebraska, thinks it now worse than at any time for forty years. 

Such a comprehensive fact must have many causes: 

I. One of these is the excessive time given to other languages just at the psychological 
period of greatest linguistic plasticity and capacity for growth. 

II. The second cause of this degeneration is the subordination of literature and content 
to language study. Grammar arises in the old age of language. 

III. It is hard and, in the history of the race, a late change to receive language through the 
eye which reads instead of through the ear which hears. 

IV. The fourth cause of degeneration of school English is the growing preponderance of 
concrete words for designating things of sense and physical acts, over the higher element of 
language that names and deals with concepts, ideas, and non-material things. 

The first result of this is that the modern school child is more and more mentally helpless 
without objects of sense." (17) 

3. Margaret Sherwood, assistant Professor of Enghsh Literature in 
Wellesley College, Massachusetts, since 1912, writes that: 

"The great meanings of literature should be taught, not dogmatically, but with reverent 
effort to interpret, to become aware of many kinds of insight into the mysteries of existence, to 
let life grow great in finding how different thinkers, searchers for the light, struggled, won, or 
failed. That large reading of human life and experience that shows us growth achieved, perhaps, 
through failure, doubt, despair, must be ours. While we may not always share the conclusion, 
we are wiser for sharing the struggle; the aspirations of many an one with whose convictions 
we should not agree may prove the truest stimulus; all is safe so long as the great issues of life 
are conceived as spiritual issues. * * * 

It is frankly for its civilizing power that we need this study, not for remote questions of 
scholarship involving intellectual gymnastics. The highest type of literature, the most imag- 
inative, the most idealistic, should be brought to bear upon life; the young should know their 
Carlyle and their Ruskin, their Browning and their Keats, their Shakespeare, Bishop Berkeley 
and Sir Thomas Browne, as they now know brake and lever, pulley and piston, and the wriggling 
of the amoeba under the microscope. They should be taught that: "A good book is the precious 



HDescribed in the Boy Problem, by its founder, William B. Forbush. Chicago, 1901, p. 91.) 
(17) Hall, pp. 442, 445, 456. 

39 



life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life,' * * * We 
need to teach the message, the supreme importance of literature as soul revelation, with less of the 
outer covering, more of the divine intent, that the young may be made to feel the impact of the 
intellectual and spiritual past experience of the race as expressed in terms of beauty." (37) 

4. Aristotle says of: 

"The Origin and Development of Poetry, Psychologically, Poetry, may be traced to two 
causes, the instinct of Imitation, and the instinct of 'Harmony' and Rhythm. 

Historically viewed. Poetry diverged early in two directions: traces of this twofold tendency 
are found in the Homeric poems: Tragedy and Comedy exhibit the distinction in a developed 
form. 

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our 
nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference 
between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures; and 
through imitation he learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things 
imitated. * * * 

Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' 
and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this 
natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitude, till their rude improvisations gave birth 
to Poetry." (1) 

5. James F. Hosic, Head of Department of English, Chicago Teachers 
College, informs us that: 

"An outline of English to guide the teachers of a school is, in a sense, a necessary evil * * *. 
But English as a subject of study does not lend itself readily or happily to definite outlining. ** * 
The word English has come to signify a group of studies called language, composition, word study, 
reading, literature, grammar, and even penmanship. For clearness it is worth while to observe 
that only four distinct but related activities are involved: hearing, speaking, reading, and writing 
English. The essential purpose of these studies, moreover, is only twofold: to become able to 
express yourself and to understand others". (19) 

6. The Joint Committee informs us that: 

1. "Training in composition is of equal importance with the study of literature, and should 
have an equal allowance of time. Composition work should find place in every year of the school 
course. 

2. Subjects for compositions should be drawn from the pupil's life and experience. To base 
theme work mainly upon literature studies leads pupils to think of composition as a purely academic 
exercise, bearing little relation to life. 

3. Oral work should be conducted in intimate relations with written work, and ordinarily 
the best results will follow when both are taught by the same teacher. 

4. Theory and practice should go hand in hand. The principles of grammar and rhetoric 
should be taught at the time and to the extent that they are aids to expression. 

5. If examinations are given, they should be framed as to be a test of power rather than of 
memory. 

The general purpose of teaching oral expression in the schools is to make possible in the 
lives of the people an accurate, forceful living speech which shall be adequate for ordinary inter- 
course and capable of expressing the thoughts and emotions of men and women in other relations 
of life. Recognizing the fact that the impulses to converse, to sing, to narrate, to picture, and 
to portray (mimic and dramatize) are racial traits of long standing, and that the ability to be 
effective and interesting in these forms of expression is of enduring social importance, it becomes 
the task of the teacher to provide incentive and occasion for the normal exercise of these impulses, 
and to free the channels of expression by establishing right habits of thought and by developing 
the organs of speech. It is likewise natural for men to enjoy in others excellence and skill in 
speech and portrayal, and the cultivation of the auditory taste and the dramatic sense enhances 



(37) Sherwood, pp. 888, 889. 
(1) Aristotle, pp. 1, 15, 17. 
(19) Hosic, pp. 4-7. 



40 



the enjoyment of these forms of art. Such enjoyment it is the privilege and function of the school 
to promote. 

The essential object of the literature work of the 7th, 8th, and 9th years is so to appeal to 
the developing sensibilities of early adolescence as to lead to eager and appreciative reading of 
books of as high an order as is possible for the given individual, to the end of both present and 
future development of his moral, emotional, aesthetic, and mental nature. To this general purpose, 
stated somewhat more in detail in the first three paragraphs below, all other purposes must be 
secondary". (33) 

7. Percival Chubb in "Teaching of EngHsh" quotes Sainte-Beuve as 
follows: 

"I hold very little to literary opinions. Literary opinions occupy very little place in my life 
and thoughts. What does occupy me seriously is life itself and the object of it. Chubb further 
says: This is cited by a disciple, Matthew Arnold.who takes the same attitude holding that poetry. 
Literature generally, is to be appraised according to its soundness as a criticism of life. And these 
two men are above suspicion on literary grounds; both had an exquisite sense of the beauty of 
literary art and of the excellences of style. Let us too, then use Literature in this spirit to aid 
our young men and women to interpret life, to see life, to respond to the spectacle and drama 
of life. * * * 

In prescribing the literature that is to be read during the High School period, we must allow 
several factors to count. These may be ranged under two main divisions: first, the characteristics, 
the needs, and the interests of the adolescent period; and secondly, the vocational and social 
demands made upon High School education. The two requirements must be kept in mind: 
General culture, or education for a typical, ideal manhood and womanhood; and preparation to 
meet the actual demands of life and a specific kind of social environment. Education cannot 
simply be for power and for general culture; it must likewise be a novitiate for life, and must clear 
an opening into the vocations. The very important facts must be faced that the overwhelming 
majority of High School graduates conclude their academic education when they graduate; and 
yet that large numbers pass from the High School into the professional and technical schools, 
omitting college training. Most of them go forth into the shops of the world to labor severally 
according to gifts and opportunities; some into a technical institute to serve as an apprentice- 
ship in a selected calling; others, into college. The High School should, therefore, enable them 
to discover their gifts, and should have emphasized their cultivation with an outlook toward 
the vocation for which they fit. The public expects as much; and from the American point of 
view, rightly so. A vast amount of time is being wasted in collegiate education upon unpropitious 
material that needs other methods of treatment. 

The High School course in English, therefore, must be framed to subserve this double prepara- 
tion: it must aid in the preparation for social and personal life, — that is, for manhood and woman- 
hood and citizenship; it must also aid in the choice of, and advance toward, a vocation. In- 
cidentally it must dovetail into the higher institutions of learning and craftsmanship, academic 
and professional. Incidentally, we say, because these institutions have no peculiar demands to 
make on the High School other than those which these schools should make for themselves, — 
namely, that the work they undertake to do shall be well done. Of these two general purposes, 
that of general culture must be the controlling one. We have many types of character to keep 
in mind and to develop. All we can do is to allow free play of these considerations upon the 
problem of selection." (8) 

8. Hampton Institute, Virginia, in its Academic-Normal Courses in 
English uses the following: 

"The aim of the English course is to develop in pupils the ability to use the mother tongue 
in both oral and written speech with clearness, correctness, and facility. To secure this end, a 
progressive line of reading, oral and written composition, and grammar is carried on throughout 
the course. 

During the first year, the work consists of reproduction exercises, letter writing, and short 
oral and written compositions based on personal experiences, the work of other lessons, the trades, 
the occupations, and the activities of school 1 fe. 



(33) Joint Committee. (Report being printed.) 
(8) Chubb, pp. 237-241. 

41 



The technical grammar in this year includes a detailed study of all the parts of speech. 
Common errors receive special attention. 

The work of the second year completes the study of technical grammar, and here again 
the emphasis is laid on the practical side of grammar; but composition — with special attention 
to oral composition on trade subjects, the writing of both friendly and business letters, and long 
and short themes on interesting subjects — is still the core of the work. 

The third year continues the effort to apply the rules of grammar to the problems of the 
student's own language. Oral expression has a good share of the time, and argumentation is 
emphasized by having frequent class debates. The written composition illustrates as far as 
possible, the three forms of writing — exposition, narration, and description. 

In the fourth year rhetoric is planned to give the mature subject more of the theory of the 
English language, more practice in its use as governed by good style, and a wider acquaintance 
with the best authors. One period a week will be given to a study of etymology. 

The work in oral composition is made as practical and personal as possible throughout the 
course. The Trade School and Agricultural Department furnish lists of subjects suggested by 
their work, and these give an endless variety of topics for short oral expositions. 

The reading is carefully planned. Not only does the student purchase one book for reading 
each year — the nucleus of his future library — but he also has access to a great many other volumes. 
Some of these latter are read in their entirety in class; others are read in part and the pupil has 
an opportunity of finishing them out of school hours. 

The first-year list includes: Around the World in the Sloop Spray, Dicken's Christmas 
Carol, Heroic Ballads, Hyde's Speaker, Lincoln's Speeches, Man Without a Country, Moore's 
Life of Columbus and Life of Lincoln, The Story of the Chosen People, Scudder's Washington, 
Snow Bound, Two Years Before the Mast, Birds and Bees, Dole's American Citizen, England's 
Story, Miles Standish, The Last of the Mohicans, Hero Stories, Scottish Chiefs, The Ship of State, 
The Sketch Book, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Seawell's Twelve Naval Captains, The Great 
Stone Face, etc. 

The second-year list: Braddock's Defeat, A Bunch of Herbs, The Cable Book, David 
Copperfield, The Life of Frederick Douglas. The Future of the American Negro, Grandfather's 
Chair, Hiawatha's Hunting of the Bear, Ivanhoe, The Lanier Book, A Message to Garcia, Mun- 
ger's on the Threshold, The Page Book, The Roosevelt Book, Self-Culture, Stories of the Old 
Dominion, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Paul Revere's Ride and Other Poems, Twice-Told Tales, The 
Spy, Franklin's Autobiography, Holmes's Poems, Peasant and Prince, Plutarch's Lives, Tales of 
the White Hills, Westward Ho!, The Van Dyke Book, etc. 

The third-year list: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Southey's Life of Nelson, The Merchant of 
Venice, King Lear, A Tale of Two Cities, Tales of a Grandfather, The Talisman, Quentin Durward, 
Self-Cultivation in English, Silas Marner, Southern Prose and Poetry, The Toilers of the Sea, 
Burke's Conciliation, The Cambridge Book of Poetry, British Authors, Bacon's Essays, Selections 
from Tennyson, Carlyle's Essay on Burns, etc. 

The literature used in the fourth year illustrates the principles of rhetoric. The Huntington 
Memorial Library is well supplied with standard literature, which is available for use in academic 
classes. 

The memorizing of certain selections is required in every year-; and every student owns a 
book of quotations compiled by the department. Students are also furnished with a book list 
for use in the selection of generaf reading. Every effort is made, through the use of material 
suited to the student's capacity, to interest him in reading and to develop a taste for good books." 

II. Some of the various views held as to Vocational Guidance and 
Vocational Education in the Secondary Schools. 

1. E. P. Cubberly, of Leland Stanford Junior University, informs us as 
follows : 

"Starting originally as an outgrowth of and a slight variation from the Old Latin school 
and the academy, with a limited curriculum, and with its right to existence questioned in the 
courts in almost every state north of the Ohio and Potomac and east of the Mississippi, the public 
high school has gradually been accepted by our people and has been established as one of the 
most important institutions of our democratic society. Unlike the European secondary school, 

42 



our secondary public-school system is one 'of the people and for the people', and the best interests 
of our democratic life demand that we always keep it so. * * * 

The past sixteen years have witnessed great changes and very significant changes in every 
feature of our national life. We live in a new world, and the need for new and larger knowledge 
to aid us in understanding and coping with the new conditions are very apparent. 'The develop- 
ment of secondary schools since 1890, and particularly since 1900 has every where been remark- 
able'. * * * The secondary school, if it is to realize its highest educational purpose, should pre- 
eminently be a place for the testing of capacity, the development of tastes, and the opening up 
of vocational opportunities of many kinds. * * * Let me interpret both vocational and liberal 
culture in a rather broad and liberal way. What constitutes vocational education has been 
defined differently by different men. Some would restrict the meaning of the term to industrial 
training only, but as I conceive vocational education the term should mean something much 
broader. 

The whole question of what liberal and what vocational studies are can be defined only in 
terms of individuals. What is vocational for one is liberal for another. The study of chemistry, 
for example, which is usually classified with the technical — ^vocational group, and is so for the 
future chemist or engineer, is broadly liberal when pursued by the classical student. The same 
is true of geology, biology, economic or modern industrial history. Conversely, courses as litera- 
ture, world history, economics, and the life and literature of Greece and Rome would be liberal 
studies to the technical or the scientific student. 

That the present trend toward vocational education — technical, commercial, agricultural, 
domestic, and even vocational in the narrower sense — will undoubtedly face a more general 
acceptance of new definitions of what constitutes liberal culture can hardly be doubted, but that it 
will do aught to decrease the number, either actual or proportional, of persons possessed of a 
good sound education may well be doubted". (9) 

2. G. W. Gayler, Superintendent of Schools, Canton, Illinois, as to 
Vocational Guidance says: 

' 'Four years ago one hundred and fifty-nine eighth grade pupils in our schools were asked 
among other things to give their choice of a life work. In classifying and summarizing the answers 
we found there were thirty-seven different occupations mentioned. * * * 

This study, extending over a period of four years and as yet incomplete, seems to point to 
several conclusions. First, a large percentage of adolescent boys and girls do not definitely decide 
upon their life work until late in the high school couise, perhaps often not until the course is 
completed. Secondly, a large percentage of these students vacillate, now choosing one thing 
and now another, influenced often by the most interesting thing at the time the choice is made, 
perhaps influenced by the personality of a popular teacher, or by the subject of study with which 
the mind is filled at that particular time. Thirdly, there is a greater school life expectancy for 
those who remain constant in choice than for those who change. * * * 

I am fully convinced from the study I have made that the kind of guidance we need in our 
schools today is that which will lead the boys and girls into higher grades of school work and the 
advice they need most is that which will cause them to remain longer in school. * * * 

The pupils should be encouraged to create, cherish, and foster ideals. No one thing has 
more effect on the future life of the children than this. The teacher, like Agnes in David Copper- 
field, should always be pointing the way upward. This is the best thing the teacher can do. 
In my own life nothing has helped guide me so much as the ideals formed by contrast with men 
whom I admired, and by reading biographies of great men. Ideals presented in great selections 
of literature have inspiration for the student if properly presented by the teacher. Talks by the 
teacher, principal or superintendent on the value of education, financial and cultural, given to the 
school as a whole, or to individuals, discussions concerning different vocations and opportunities 
will help pupils to understand the value of the school to them, and the aid which it attempts to 
give each student. Finally, the question of vocational guidance in so far as the high school ought 
to deal with it, is concerned with the abridgement and enrichment of the course of study. The 
course of study must be vitalized. It must touch life at more points. It must appear worth 
while to boys and girls. Vocational guidance has to do with every subject of study and every 



(9) Cubberly, pp. 454-465. 

43 



recitation. It is not a new subject to be brought into the course. It must be handled not by a 
new teacher added to the corps. It should vitalize every subject and every lesson. * * * 

Vocational guidance has to do with the kind of work offered in the school, with the way work 
is done in schools, with the inspiration breathed by the teacher into her class, with the advice 
which she gives when the boy comes to her with his problems. Every teacher should be a 
counsellor. Every teacher must be interested in boys and girls, far more in these than in Latin, 
or history or science or literature alone or any subject whatever. * * * 

In conclusion let me say then, that there is a place in high school for vocational guidance. 
We ought to have more of it, but it should come in largely through the regular work and in many 
places, rather than in one place through one teacher teaching a particular subject. Every subject, 
every lesson has in it great possibilities. Every teacher is and must be a counsellor and guide of 
youth", (16) 

3. Frederick G. Bonser of Columbia University says that: 

'^Courts even interpret constitutions as placing property rights above human rights. Seven 
of our states exempt children entirely from most of the restrictions on child labor in the canning 
industries on the ground that these industries deal with perishable materials — thus setting a 
higher value on sweet corn, tomatoes and beans than upon child life and its rights to natural 
growth! 

Ten states permit children under fourteen to work in factories and workshops. Eight states 
still let boys of twelve work in mines. Thirty-five states do not have the protection of the eight 
hour day for their working children. Although given expression over half a century ago in 
England, Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' is charged with as much meaning and need for 
response in America today, many children— 

'* * * are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
In the country of the free * * * 

They know the grief of man without its wisdom; 
They sink in man's despair without its calm; 
Are slaves without the liberty of Christdom; 
Are martyrs by the pang without the palm.' 

And to those who know details of shop life, and of the home life in the thirteen thousand 
tenement houses in New York City licensed for the making and finishing of clothing where the 
labor of all the members of the family can be utilized without reference to age or factory law, 
Thomas Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' chants a message as true for us to-day as it was a century 
ago in the land across the sea. Women, men, and children as well, here: 

'* * * Stitch-stitch-stitch, 
In poverty, hunger and dirt. 
Sewing at once with a double thread, 
A shroud as well as a shirt.' 



In seeking for this common denominator of experience in establishing common ideals, I 
submit that the same great appeals made to men and women of culture by the he (products of 
man's creative genius are universal. The same masterpieces of literature, art, and music which 
stimulate appreciation, aspiration, and deeds of service among men and women who practice 
law, medicine and theology appeal just as strongly to men and women who practice in wood- 
work, metals, or textiles when these masterpieces are . presented to them aright. When dramas 
or concerts of a high order are offered in the New Theatre, or the Metropolitan Opera House, or 
in the parks especially to the people of industrial and commercial vocations, our newspaper editors 
manifest surprise that these people are so appreciative, and so uplifted. It would only be sur- 
prising if they were not. The distribution of human nature in its fundamental elements is 
democratic. 



(16) Gayler, pp. 161-166. 

44 



Securing a point of contact for the working man with the products of genius other than 
that which is mechanical seems to be one of the great difiiculties. This difficulty certainly lies 
partly in the deplorably low and insufficient ideals and methods in the selecting and teaching of 
masterpieces in literature, art, music, and history in the public schools. The narrowness in 
selection and the academic method of instruction both contribute to the sad fact that these sub- 
jects often fail entirely to awaken any appreciative response in the boys and girls to whom they 
are taught. The literature, art, and music do not all need to be about industrial activities to 
reach the life interests of the individual workers. They too have the problems and fears and hopes 
that find comfort in the expressions of the best thoughts and feelings of the master poets, artists, 
and musicians. Man must have an anchorage in something of permanent worth to which he 
may relate the efforts of his daily life. 'Man's reach should exceed his grasp', said Browning's 
Del Sarto. It is perspective, character, idealism, appreciation of higher possibilities that all 
men need to make them rise to realization of their fullest capacities. 'The hand can never 
execute anything higher than the character can inspire,' said Emerson. 

Our workingman's character is our concern quite as much as the cunning of his hand. To 
develop this attitude of mind that will give the man an appreciation of the meaning and sig- 
nificance of his work is the problem. That great and unrealized possibilities lie in the appeals 
of the literary masterpieces which might be appropriately used in schools, an examination of 
available material will certainly reveal. Points of contact almost direct with the craftsman's 
work are found in the best contributions of the great masters. Go with George Eliot into the 
shop of one Antonio Stradivarius, a maker of violins, and hear his words to his profligate artist 
friend: 

'Who draws a line and satisfies his soul. 

Making it crooked where it should be straight? 

* * * God be praised, 

Antonio Stradivarius has an eye 

That winces at false work and loves the true * * * 
'Tis God gives skill, 

But not without man's hands. He could not make 

Antonio Stradivarius' violins 

Without Antonio.' 

This conception of the workingman's co-operation with God in the progressive creation of 
the social world lifts the craftsman from the plane of artisanship to that of art, no matter what the 
work may be. Emerson identifies man with the Creator in his resolution of man's world to his 
needs in these lines: 

'The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 
Wrought in a sad sincerity; 
Himself from God he could not free; 
He builded better than he knew; — 
The conscious stone to beauty grew.' 

Shakespeare, Browning, Tennyson, Kipling, Carlyle, George Eliot, Dickens, Victor Hugo, 
Emerson and many others whose perspective of social relationship was broad and deep, have 
given us much that has peculiar fitness for the man whose vocational contribution is made by 
the united cunning of brain and hand. 

Would not the acquaintance of the boy and girl with such master appeals from literature 
showing that there are points of common interest with their everyday work lead them to set a 
new value upon literary treasures? It is not his work in itself that is so destructive to the spiritual 
life of the industrial worker. It is rather that he has so little else in his life. In Shop, Browning 
utters a protest against the narrowness of life which is so characteristic of our day: 

'Because a man has shop to mind 
In time and place, since flesh must live. 
Needs spirit lack all life behind, 
All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive. 
All loves except what trade can give? ' 

45 



One of the great purposes of any worthy education is to teach men and women how to use 
their time of leisure so that it is an uplift to them rather than a stumbling block. They must be 
taught to look up for their pleasures and not down. If history, literature, art, and music are to 
reach out through life and enrich its leisure as well as to dignify and ennoble its work, the interest 
in these and the appreciation of their possibilities must be cultivated in the schools." (6) 

G. Stanley Hall says: 

"The last decade has witnessed a remarkable new movement on the part of colleges to 
influence high schools, which began with the Report of the Committee of Ten, printed in 1893. 
We have also had Reports of the Committee of Seven, Nine, Twelve, Fourteen, Fifteen, besides 
that of the National Education Association in 1896 on entrance requirements which invoked the 
aid of the American Historical and Philological Associations. In general these influences have 
worked from above downward, the dominating influence and the initiative in most cases coming 
from colleges or universities. That this movement did good for a time no one can deny. It 
has made many junctures between secondary and higher education; greatly increased the interest 
of facilities in high schools; given the former fruitful pedagogic themes for their own discussions; 
brought about a more friendly feeling and better mutual acquaintance; given slow colleges a 
wholesome stimulus; made school counses richer, given them better logical sequence; detected 
many weak points; closed gaps; defined standards of what education means; brought great 
advantages from uniformity and co-operation, and no doubt, on the whole, has improved the 
conditions of college entrance examinations and aided in continuity." (17) 

While this movement seems to have made a satisfactory juncture between 
the secondary and the higher education, it has not done much if anything 
for the articulation between elementary schools ending with Grade VI and the 
now so-called junior high schools, or intermediate schools (Grades VII, VIII, 
IX). This is now what we are striving for, i. e., a closer and better articulation 
between the pre-adolescent period and the adolescent one for the great in- 
dividual differences in pupils are then quite marked. We may define ele- 
mentary education as the pre-adolescent stage and secondary education as the 
adolescent stage. 

Again Hall says: 

"Psychic adolescence is heralded by all-sided mobilization. The child from 9 to 12 is well 
adjusted to his environment and proportionally developed; he represents probably an old and 
relatively perfected stage race-maturity, still in some sense and degree feasible in warm climates, 
which, as we have previously urged, stands for a long-continued one, a terminal stage of human 
development at some post-simian point. * * * 

The ethical life is immensely broadened and deepened, the flood gates of heredity are thrown 
open again as in infancy. Early adolescence in some respects is the infancy of man's higher nature. 
The boy or girl moves about in both an inner and an outer world. * * * 

The 'teens' are emotionally unstable and pathetic." (17) 

Shall \ve not then strive to furnish noble literature and good environ- 
ments for both the vocationally trained and the liberally trained pupil so as 
to help him to live a worthy life, especially, in this early adolescent stage, 
which seems to be the foundation, so to speak, of one's higher nature? 

General Summary: These reports on existing conditions as to English 
Language and Literature cover a very wide range. The condition of English 
Language and Literature needs to be improved. The results obtained, show 
some improvement, yet a sad need is felt for better trained teachers, better 



(6) Bonser, pp. 43-47. 
(17) Hall, pp. 508, 71-74. 



46 



environments and a better organized work along the lines of English. A 
variety of ends may be subserved by English study, but subsidiary interests 
should never be allowed to encroach upon the main purposes of it, that is, 
such as: To enable the pupil to give expression to thoughts of his own and 
to understand the expressed thoughts of others; to cultivate in the pupil a 
taste for reading; to give the pupil some acquaintance with good literature 
and furnish him the means of coming in touch with this literature. In other 
words, the objects to be gained by the study of English are, primarily, these: 
The power to use it effectively in reading, in literature, in speaking, and in 
writing; and a more complete command of our own language. In every 
school library there should be a collection of books of references, supplementary 
readers, bulletins, etc. If English is well studied it makes for accuracy: 
(1) of observation in seeing just what is printed and in hearing just what is 
said; (2) of speech in producing careful pronunciation, and a workable 
vocabulary by selecting the exact word for the thought. We should have, as 
a rule, less technical grammar and that should be applied in such a way as 
not to seem stale to the pupil; more Vocational Literature should.be used 
in our Enghsh Courses and there should be a reorganization of our Secondary 
School System and, last but not least, better trained teachers. 



47 



Part III. 
THE PROBLEM. 

All phases of Correlating Vocational Education and Liberal Education 
through English Language and Literature are not to be considered in this 
thesis. Only two phases will be considered: (1) As to subject matter, or 
material of Vocational Literature and General Literature, as given in the 
Course of Study for English, and (2) As to the method, or process of correlating 
these two kinds of Literature which are of the Vocational type and of the 
Liberal type of Education. 

The Correlation of Vocational Education and Liberal Education through 
English Language and Literature may be accompHshed, partially, through the 
study material, the reading material, and the oral and written composition. 
By the last is meant the theme work as outlined, or suggested in the Course 
of English Study in this thesis. This material, how^ever, must be so used, as 
to increase the affective activities, the cognitive activities, and the volitional 
activities of the pupil's mind. 

Sensibility in a psychological sense includes both the sensory activities 
and the affective activities of the world of experience. Sensibility in a literary 
sense includes, primarily, the affective activities and only secondarily the 
sensory activities. As tools to earn a living, we, as a rule, discard the affective 
activities of life. But the affective activities which form the literary conscious- 
ness must be developed. 

Vocational Education does not develop, primarily, the cultural forces of 
the pupil's mind, but it does increase, mainly, the vocational information and 
does promote, mainly, the capacity to earn a living. 

Liberal Education does not promote, primarily, the pupil's capacity to 
earn a living and does not increase, primarily, the pupil's vocational information, 
but it does develop, mainly, the cultural forces of the pupil's mind. 

The Academic, or Liberal course (as defined in this thesis) cannot help 
the pupil to his full power in the business world. The Vocational course, which 
is being gradually introduced into our schools cannot help the pupil to his 
full value in cultural service. There must be a correlation of the two courses, 
especially in Enghsh, in order that the pupil may have a well-balanced educa- 
tion. While the Liberal, or Cultural course may have more value for the 
teacher, or the literary person, it is also essential to the vocationally trained 
pupil in order that he may live more completely. 

The problem in correlating vocational education and liberal education 
through English Language and Literature is to give culture as well as knowl- 
edge, or information to the vocationally trained pupil and knowledge, or 
information as well as culture to the liberally trained one. How can this be 
done? It must be accomplished, in order to be the most effective, both by 
general organization and by methods of teaching. 

It seems from investigations already reported, that the public school 
system should be reorganized into the following divisions: Kindergartens, 
elementary schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools. The Inter- 

48 



mediate School as now found in some systems is the same as the Junior High 
School, merely an interchange of terms. The Course of Study in English as 
suggested in this thesis is outlined, primarily, for the six-three-three" plan, or 
for the junior high school and for the senior high school. It can be modified, 
however, to suit local conditions. 

Broadly speaking, the junior high school is a high school lowered to the 
seventh grade, with due regard for the rather hmited experiences and training 
of pupils of twelve or thirteen years. The junior high school should not 
receive pupils until they have completed the elementary work of the six grades. 
This elementary scheme should be of a general nature, and largely academic. 
The junior high school is well fitted to foster the wide variety of prevocational, 
or try-out activities through which only a boy or girl can be sure of making 
a wise choice of a vocation. This early choice is necessary, as many pupils 
can not longer remain in the school. 

The junior high school should provide for at least five courses at each 
center. A required group and four elective groups — ^one strongly academic, 
one commercial, one agricultural and one in "Practical Arts''.^ 

The senior high school should provide for at least six courses at each 
center — a required group, and five elective groups, — an academic, a pro- 
fessional, a commercial, an agricultural, and a "Technical Arts" group. ^ ■ 

There are at least three steps in the method of preparing pupils for 
creative and productive work along every Hne: (1) A period of general educa- 
tion is necessary, a period when the base, or foundation for all occupations 
and future work is laid. The pupils should obtain this education, largely 
academic, in the elementary schools (Grades I-VI inclusive), ending when 
the pupil has reached approximately the twelfth year. All caUings in life 
require a certain amount of general education before efficient preparation for 
a specific occupation can profitably commence. (2) There must be also, a 
prevocational period of training when boys or girls should be finding them- 
selves vocationally and trying themselves out to determine which calling in 
life they should prepare for and pursue. (3) There must be also a period for 
vocational training proper — a time when the aim, primarily, of the instruction 
should be to prepare directly for the particular calling he or she lexpects to 
follow if they are vocationally trained. This is, also, the period for academic 
training proper — a time when the aim, primarily, is preparatory along academic 
lines, for college or university work. 

A knowledge about and an interest in the various fundamental occupa- 
tions of life, habits of thinking and working, powers of observation and gaining 
control of the various parts of the body are necessary prerequisites for any 
and all the many kinds of work. 

In the reorganization plan under which the school department of Berkeley, 
Cahfornia, is now working, which was inaugurated January, 1910, the twelve 



^Practical Arts usually include industrial arts, domestic science and agriculture but the term 
varies. 

■^Technical Arts usually include cooking, sewing, mechanical drawing, art, crafts and 
shop — (wood work, metal, machine). 

49 



grades, or years, are divided into three groups; the Elementary group, com- 
prising the first six years of school life (exclusive of the kindergarten); the 
Intermediate School group (Grades VII-VIII-IX), and the Upper High 
School group (Grades X-XI-XII). This Intermediate group is the same 
as the Prevocational and Junior High School group, the Junior High School, 
as of Detroit, Michigan, or the Central School group as used by other schools. 
On a somewhat similar basis, the Course of English Study, in this thesis, is 
laid. 

Los Angeles, California, J. H. Francis, superintendent. In September, 
1910, the seventh and eighth grades of several schools in one section of Los 
Angeles were assembled at the San Pedro Street School (B. W. Reed, principal) 
for departmental work, in which certain optional subjects were offered and 
in which promotion was made by points. So well did the experiment succeed, 
that in September, 1911, four buildings, suitable at points central to im- 
portant attendance districts, were cleared of lower-grade children and filled 
with the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, who were drawn from the schools 
which they formerly attended. The department also committed itself to 
the plan of extending the high school upward two years as well as down- 
ward. Ultimately, when all details have been worked out, the school depart- 
ment will comprise the following groups: An elementary division, beyond 
the kindergarten, of six years; an "intermediate-school" division of three 
years; and a "high-school" period covering five years and giving work which 
is the equivalent of that to be had in the freshman and sophomore years of 
college curricula. The last two years of the five year high-school period is 
now known as "The Los Angeles Junior College", consisting of grades XIII 
and XIV. 

Superintendent Francis, in speaking of the organization, writes as follows: 

"This grouping is necessary from physiological, psychological, and sociological viewpoints. 

Physiologically and psychologically the content of things taught and the method of presenta- 
tion should dififer with the preadolescent and the adolescent child. The principles involved are 
too well known to the teacher to justify discussion. With the facts so patent and well known, 
the marvel is we have tolerated the present grouping so long. 

From the sociological viewpoint we hope to benefit greatly the child who will attend high 
school, the child who will not attend high school, the pupils who will go to the university, and 
the pupils who will not go to the university. Of these groups we regard the second and last as 
the greatest importance. A fifth thing, and no less important, we hope to accomplish is that 
of holding boys and girls in school through the only logical and rational means, that of interest 
in the work they are doing. 

I have no doubt but that the new grouping will result in — (1) A saving of time. All that 
is meritorious that we accomplish in our 16 years of school work can be done better in 14 years 
under proper organization. There is enough that we are not doing, and that should be done, 
to occupy the other two years. 

(2) A conservation of right ideals. The attitude of the average pupil toward scholarship 
and mental attainments is not sound, and as a result our schools are not producing thinkers. I 
believe the content and methods of instruction in seventh and eighth grades under the old plan 
to be responsible in part for this miserable condition. 

(3) A larger number and better class of students in the high schools and universities. Both 
to-day are carrying many who should not be there, for they lack purpose and will not make 
adequate returns to society for the money and the effort expended upon them. On the other 
hand, there are countless numbers who should be in attendance in these schools and are not 

60 



because of discouragements due to courses of study and the time and money necessary to get 
what they desire. 

(4) A grouping and presentation of subjects that will enable us to do for the intermediate 
pupil what the high school to-day is doing for its pupils. 

(5) A grouping and presentation of subjects that will enable our 14-year high schools to 
produce technically trained men and women in music, art, commerce, industry, agriculture, 
and home economics. 

(6) Allowing the university to occupy its legitimate field and do real university work. 

I thoroughly believe that the reorganization of the school system along these lines is the 
largest and most significant educational movement in modern times." (46) 

An excerpt from the U. S. Bureau of Education says: 

"The Hall school of child study has made clear the existence of at least two significant 
periods in the development of children — the adolescent and the preadolescent periods. Each 
of these is shown to have differentiating and distinguishing characteristics, both physical and 
mental. In the preceding chapter it was shown that the six-three-three arrangement of grades 
is one which recognizes these stages of child development and that it is an arrangement of school 
machinery making it easy for school officials to plan and carry their work into effect in conformity 
to the differing characteristics of these periods. In the selection of the content of a course of 
study and in the arrangement of the detail in an orderly and progressive whole, due regard must 
be paid to the matter of stages in child growth. 

Again, concerning the high-school course, the committee recommend a six-year course, 
beginning with the seventh year, on the grounds that the seventh grade, rather than the ninth, 
is the natural turning point in the pupil's life; that an easier transition can thereby be made 
from the one-teacher regimen to the system of special teachers; that a larger percentage of 
students would, through this arrangement, be retained in school; and that the final result would 
be a more closely articulated system, with a larger percentage of graduates from the high- 
school." (46) 

The reorganization of the secondary school system is not the only factor 
necessary to facilitate the proper study of the material in the Course of English 
Study. There is another factor, equally important, even if not more so, and 
that factor is — the teacher. A teacher training for secondary teaching and 
one training for elementary teaching should make a specific difference in the 
method of his preparation for teaching. Dean Luckey informs us that: 

"Education has been defined as, the process of mental development, or the adjustment of 
the individual to his environment. But a more complete though somewhat awkward definition 
is the following: Education is the process of the reconstruction and utilization of experiences 
by means of which the individual is brought into sympathetic relations with, and given ever- 
increasing control of, his environment. With this definition before us, teaching becomes the 
intelligent guidance in this adaptation; teaching then is, in the truest as well as the broadest 
sense, character building. To be efficient and vital the teaching must be adapted at all points 
to the interests, the nature, and the immediate needs of the child who is to be influenced by it. 
The pupil must feel at every point that what he is doing is worth while. In order to put into 
operation such teaching, it is necessary to make a specific difference in the methods of the prepara- 
tion of elementary and of secondary teachers. 

The material for mental development naturally covers two fields; the great commercial and 
industrial subjects — the objective of scientific world; the great literary and culture subjects — the 
subjective or humanistic world. The one administers most to man's material wants, the other, 
to his spiritual. 

In early school life the child is more interested in the objective world— nature, things, and 
natural objects. These furnish the key by means of which he becomes familiar with the symbols 
and forms (tools) of thought. 

In secondary education he is better prepared for, if not more interested in, the humanistic 
world — history, language, literature, and begins to lay the foundation for broad culture and 
scientific research. 



(46) U. S. Bureau of Education, pp. 86-87, 117. 

51 



In the higher education he naturally limits the field of his activity, selecting one or more 
subjects from either the scientific or humanistic field. He brings to bear upon them the search 
light of his experiences, and makes them the foundations for further investigations and philosoph- 
ical thought, the relating and unifying of all experiences. 

The mental development of the individual covers three important periods; the early formative 
period, extending from birth to puberty; the period of orientation or mental adjustment, extend- 
ing from the beginning of puberty to probably 18; the period of manhood, specialization, and 

professional life. 

The first period is covered by elementary, foundation studies; formative disciplinary work; 
general information concretely represented. The second is covered by the high school studies; 
less of form more of content; a period of relating adjusting and classifying knowledge; a period 
of orientation and transition from that of the acquisition of knowledge through instruction to 
that of the acquisition of knowledge through original research and investigation. The third 
period is covered by the last years of the college, and the special professional schools. It is the 
work of specializiJig for a vocation. 

The instructional method, which is best adapted to the education of children, and the 
laboratory method, or method of scientific research, more suitable for the work of advanced 
students, have but little in common. They represent the two extremes in the methods of teaching. 
The high school, representing the transition period, possesses some features belonging to each. 

In the elementary school all subjects >ield to the instructional method, i. e., the method 
through which the teacher brings together, in an orderly and systematic arrangement, all the 
essential material on the subject in the form most easy of acquisition by the learner. In the high 
school some of the subjects are formative, or disciplinary, and require the instructional method, 
while other subjects are more a matter of content, mental adjustment, individual effort and 
discovery, and yield more readily to the laboratory or scientific method, a method in which the 
student is placed under greater responsibility and given greater freedom for independent action. 

The secondary teacher, therefore, must be a master of both methods. He must be skilled 
in imparting knowledge when dealing with those subjects, or parts of subjects, in which the student 
must become familiar. But he must also be a student, master of the tools and the method of 
research, and capable of interesting and intelligently guiding his students in independent action 
and original investigations." (22) 

In order that the work in English, in the Secondary Schools, may cultivate 
accuracy, develop an appreciation of the beautiful in language, secure an 
enlargement and an enrichment of the type-forces, or ideals of life, it is neces- 
sary that emphasis be placed upon three distinct phases of English instruction: 
(1) Constructive English, (2) Technical English, (3) Literature. If, however, 
we consider English on the basis of a two-fold classification we shall then 
have: (1) Composition, (2) Literature. We shall, however, consider the 
application of Technical English or Technical Grammar as necessary to both 
of these divisions. 

The definite aim in teaching Constructive English, or Composition work, 
is to enable the pupil to speak and write in simple, clear, forceful and correct 
English. To these aims should be added the development of individuality 
in speech, that is, of style. 

The work is of two kinds, oral and written. Oral composition means 
much more than merely the expressions used in common, ordinary every day 
life — it includes much longer and more connected speech, such as incidents, 
topics from history, geography, science, character sketches, reproduction of 
stories, in fact any thing that demands attention to form and substance, or 
meaning. Effective teaching also demands criticism of any thing which aids 
in the oral delivery of thought, such as proper pronunciation of words, posture 



(22) Luckey, pp. 233-236. 

52 



ERRATUM 

On Page 53, second paragraph, line 8, 

Mr. Thomas Swain should read Mr. Charles Swain Thomas. 






and the ability to stand before a class and command attention. An applica- 
tion of Technical English may be made here very successfully by calling 
attention to compound sentences, connectives, or whatever is essential to 
good work at this period. In order that the teaching in Constructive English, 
or Composition work may be effective, form and substance must be taken 
into consideration. 

As to Technical English, or Technical Grammar, it is necessary to have 
a review of grammatical principles and to improve an opportunity for further 
systematic progress in the study of English. It should be largely taught as 
applied English. Technical English is necessary as a time-saving educational 
device, as an element to strengthen Constructive English, or Composition 
Work and as a helpful agency in the interpretation of literature. Concrete 
examples should be given to illustrate the value of this division of English. 
Mr. Thomas Swain has made the point clear by his illustration from Bryant's: 
To A Waterfowl: 

There is a Power whose care 

Teaches thy way along the pathless coast, — 

The desert and illimitable air, — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

He says: "The pupil on first thought may regard desert as a noun. But 
by careful questioning on the part of the teacher, the pupil will be led to see 
that desert — here almost synonymous with empty — is an adjective modifying 
air. And with this grammatical conception established, there will come to 
the pupil an enlarged sense of the beauty of the poet's vision." The main 
end to be sought for is: (1) The securing of a sense of accuracy in expression; 
(2) The development of a response to vitalized literature. 

As to the third division of English which is Literature, the primary aim is 
to develop appreciation. In developing appreciation of the selection as a 
whole, the sentiment and other meanings are the essential things. As a 
means of developing this subjective reaction, or appreciation, special attention 
must be given to meanings of words, phrases, figures, sensory activities, or 
sense appeals, and characterization through observation of life and the study 
of literature. Details such as involve further analytic work are necessary, 
but they must be wisely subservient to the desired end — appreciation of litera- 
ture itself. 

The literature period, which allows emphasis to fall upon lines of conduct, 
through lessons and examples in integrity, in courtesy, in patriotism, in the 
performance of allotted daily tasks, leads to the development of a worthy 
character. 

The method or process of correlating is: (1) To develop the cultural 
activities, or sensibilities of the vocationally trained pupil, and of the liberally 
trained pupil; (2) to increase the knowledge, or information of the vocation- 
ally trained pupil and of the liberally trained pupil; (3) to develop, primarily, 
the capacity of the vocationally trained pupil to earn a living, and to become 
an efficient member of society. 

This is done by developing the informational, or knowledge phase of the 
pupil's life by means of Vocational Literature and by developing the Literary 

53 



consciousness of the pupils through the aesthetics of life and things; by study 
of the aesthetics of words, of the aesthetics of phrases, of the aesthetics of 
figures, of the sensory activities, or sense appeals and of the aesthetics of 
character. 

Ernesto Nelson, Director of Secondary Education, Argentina, says: 

"In the secondary school of to-day, therefore, and, to a certain extent even in the primary 
school, knowledge-getting is still the prominent activity, throwing into the shade all other activities 
more vitally concerned with the character-forming end of education. Information is what may 
be called the building blocks of the present system of education. Information is the factor that 
conditions the pupil's progress through school and is so far the only test universally accepted as 
a measure of the amount of education given or received. The curriculum, the textbook, the 
examination paper are the most important pieces of the educational machinery, and this costly 
and formidable machinery is not concerned, as one should think it ought to be, with the self- 
development of the student and the testing of the real progress of his personality, but solely with 
standardizing, circulating, and testing the amount of information a person has to receive in order 
to be worthy of the privilege of being educated by the state. * * * 

Nothing is further from the purpose of this paper than the idea that knowledge should receive 
little attention in the field of education. In fact, knowledge could not possibly be separated 
from the process of education. Wherever there is self-activity, knowledge of some kind is sure to 
come as a result. Just as heat is the dynamic equivalent of physical energy, so knowledge is the 
intellectual equivalent of a useful psychic activity. Science is mind made, and has also made 
man's mind. Science is the specific subject matter to, which the mind may usefully apply itself. 
It is the food on which the mind grows. 

But if there can be no education without knowledge getting, there is a considerable amount 
of knowledge getting that does not promote a corresponding educational activity. 

This counterfeit knowledge is the kind of knowledge resulting from undue stress on the 
knowledge-getting side of education. * * * 

Up to the present the school authorities have been busy organizing knowledge, not education. 
The school program of to-day is made up of carefully distributed information among the successive 
stages of school work. We have yet to devise a system of activities of really educational sig- 
nificance. The laboratory method has been a step in that direction, but an immense amount of 
such organization, to make it consistent throughout, remains to be done in all departments of 
learning. * * * 

When a set of occupations has been devised that will train the spiritual possibilities stored 
in man, we shall have a system of education which will be the intellectual and ethical counterpart 
to the many systems for building up the human body. Strangely enough, although many nations 
claim to possess their own system of intellectual education, none has so far organized a system 
that will bring out the latent individual powers of the child, the adolescent, and the youth, with 
all its sequel of rightly obtained information." (47) 

Charles Eliott informs us that: 

"The difference between a good workman and a poor one in agriculture, mining, or manu- 
facturing is the difference between the man who possesses well-trained senses and good judgment 
in using them and the man who does not. 

It follows from these considerations that the training of the senses should always have a 
prime object in human education, at every stage from primary to professional. That prime object 
it has never been, and is not to-day. The kind of education the modern world has inherited from 
ancient times was based chiefly on literature. Its principal materials, besides some elementary 
mathematics, were sacred and profane writings, both prose and poetry, including descriptive 
narration, history, philosophy, and religion; but accompanying this tradition of language and 
literature was another highly useful transmission from ancient times — the study of the fine arts, 
with the many kinds of skill that are indispensible to artistic creation. * * * 



(47) U. S. Bureau of Education, pp. 23-26. 



54 



It must not be imagined that any advocate of more sense training in education expects to 
diminish the exercise of the reasoning powers or of the motive powers which distinguish man 
from the other animals, or to impair man's faith in the spiritual unity of the world, or his sense 
of duty toward fellowmen, or his sympathies with them. The devotees of natural and physical 
science during the last 150 years have not shown themselves inferior to any other class of men 
in their power to reason and to will, and have shown themselves superior to any class of men in 
the value of worth to society of the product of those powers. The men who have done most for 
the human race since the nineteenth century began, through the right use of their reason, imagina- 
tion, and will, are the men of science, the artists, and the skilled craftsmen, not the metaphysicians, 
the orators, the historians, or the rulers. In modern times the most beneficent of the rulers have 
been men who have shared in some degree the new scientific spirit, and the same is true of the 
metaphysicians. As to the real poets, teachers of religion, and other men of genius, their best 
work has the scientific quality of precision and truthfulness; and their rhetorical or oratorical work 
is only second best. The best poetry of the last three centuries perfectly illustrates this general 
truth. Shakespeare wrote: 

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows. 
The florists now tell us that thyme will not thrive except on a bank. George Herbert wrote: 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright; 
The bridal of the earth and sky, 
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night. 
For thou must die. 

Precision of statement could go no further; thought and word are perfectly accurate. Emerson 
said to the rhodora: 

The selfsame power that brought me here, brought you. 
A more accurate description of the universal Providence could not be given. Even martial poetry 
often possesses the same absolute accuracy: 

Oh! Tiber, Father Tiber, 
To whom the Romans pray, 
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms. 
Take thou in charge this day! 
Cannon to the right of them. 
Cannon to the left of them. 
Volleyed and thundered, 
Into the jaws of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 

When human emotions are so stirred, and human wills inspired, it is the accurate, perfectly 
true statement which moves most, and lasts longest: 

Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends. 

The most exact, complete, satisfying, and influential description of true neighborliness in all 
literature of the parable of the Good Samaritan: 

Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto him that fell among the robbers? 
And he said. He that showed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto him. Go and do thou 
likewise. 

It is a great lesson to be drawn from The Great War that under the passionate excitement 
and tremendous strain of the wide spread disaster the medical profession and the nurses of all 
countries are holding firmly to that exact definition of the neighbor, and are obeying strictly the 
command, *Do thou likewise.' These are men and women who have received through training 
of the senses without suffering any loss of quick sympathy or of human devotion. 

Rhetorical exaggeration, paradox, hyperbole, and rhapsody doubtless have their use in moving 
to immediate action masses of ordinary men and women; but they are not the finest weapons 
of the teacher and the moralist: 

Speaks for itself the fact. 

As unrelenting Nature leaves 

Her every act." (47) 



(47) U. S. Bureau of Education, pp. 6-14. (Charles W. Eliot.) 

55 



The knowledge-getting side of education and the "spiritual possibilities" 
stored up in humanity should be closely correlated in literature. The essential 
principles which guide us in the instruction in English Language and Literature 
are: (1) To develop the sense of abiUty to speak, read, and write with facility 
and correctness; (2) to develop the objective and the subjective meaning of 
the message. 

The first principle has to do, primarily, with Constructive English and 
with Technical English while the second principle has to do with Literature. 

As to the objective meaning of the message of the selection in literature 
the pupil must see what facts the writer is trying to impart and he must 
translate the arbitrary signs which we call words into concepts, or notions. 

Tolstoi says that, practically, the aim of art is to communicate feeling 
from one soul to another. This transfer of feeling is construed or couched 
in such a way as to embody his emotions so as to arouse in others the same 
or similar feelings. This concrete something may be a cathedral, a picture, 
or a poem, etc. The feeling kindled by a landscape may be imparted by means 
of a painting or as shown by Ruskin in a word-picture, while Millet conveys 
the same feeling by means of a picture, "The Man and the Hoe". To com- 
municate feelings one uses details and suggestive words. 

L Words. 

"All the words in our language, or in any language, are either Prose Words, that is, words 
which denote knowledge mainly, or Emotional Words, that is, such as express mainly feeling. 
There are well-marked divisions of the Second or Emotional class of words. * * * 

All objects tend either to enhance the forces of the soul, or to obstruct and waste them. 
Hence the ideas of things, so far as they are spiritually discerned, sustain or relax the tone of 
consciousness; they raise the pressure of the blood in the brain or depress it." (36) 

Literature has to do, primarily, with the emotional meanings rather 
than with the intellectual or logical meanings. We may then say that we 
have words of power, or words that inspire, or move and words of knowledge, 
or words that inform. 

All emotional reactions come from the degree to which the type-forces, 
or ideals, or inner senses, are satisfied with the type-qualities involved. 

Intellectual meanings do not satisfy. The definitions of words, as given 
in the dictionary, do not give us the real meaning. The International Dic- 
tionary defines the word "Hly" as "an endogenous bulbous plant having a 
regular perianth of six colored pieces, six stamens, and a superior three-celled 
ovary". This is not the real meaning of "lily" for the real meaning is to be 
identified in the effect "lily" has upon the sensibilities or ideals. Such a 
plan for the study of words has been outlined by Dean L. A. Sherman in the 
Supplement to the Nebraska High School Manual, 1914. He says: 

"A literary sensitiveness and consciousness must be developed. The sensibilities can be 
exercised by realizing the sentiment connotation of ideas and words, just as an arithmetical or a 
musical consciousness can be built up by practicing combinations of numbers or of tones. The 
study of the feeling aspects of things, begun in the kindergarten, must not be left to chance, but 
continued in the grades. Only a little attention, week by week, is necessary, but that little is 
imperative. If the work is not done before the student reaches the high school, it should be 



(36) Sherman, pp. 3-28. 

. 56 






v.Vi*«;ua|:,,^,(i^- 




t^tT'i^MJl 






SNOW 



administered there. A few systematic exercises in bringing home to the pupils the aesthetic 
aspects of things, through the analysis of words, phrases and figures, will open the world of senti- 
ment and poetry to neglected and backward students, and supply, in a working measure, this 
fundamental need. Surprising quickness of imagination has been developed, by these means, 
in unresponsive, unpromising pupils of foreign birth. The study of characterization, by imag- 
inative appeals, will greatly enlarge the significance of literature, and may be taught along with 
the analyls of ideas and figures. * * * 

The sensibilities of literature pupils must therefore be trained intensively. As Professor 
Tolman has said, in the sentences quoted from his Circular, the poetry of Shakespeare must be 
studied at first hand. Of course all other poetry must be studied, not less than Shakespeare's, 
at first hand. This can hardly be done by questions. The unit is too small. We need to analyze 
sentences, to find the thought. We must analyze ideas and words, to find the sentiment out of 
which poetry is constructed." (25) 

(For complete treatment of analysis of words see Numbers 25 and 36 in 
Bibliography.) 

Some Devices for Words. 

WORD-PICTURES. 

Word-pictures, or words calling up different pictures in different pupil's 
minds may be employed quite effectively in training the sensibilities. These 
may be reproduced in a drawing or painting or used for a story. The sug- 
gestiveness of the word will differ according to the individual and his environ- 
ment. Some suggestive words that may call up a picture in the pupil's 
mind from which he may tell a story are: 

bridge. pine, 

clouds. snow, 

hills. tree, 

mountain. waterfall, 

palm. winter. 

Then there are: 

Pictorial Word-Signs which may symbolize or suggest certain qualities as: 

dove peace. 

eagle power. 

fox cunning. 

lion courage. 

wolf greediness. 

In the Vocational work especially, Trade-Marks and Trade Names may 
be found very interesting and suggestive. The Trade-Mark is said to be, 
and really is a Business Asset, as is shown by the following: 

"It is said, on good authority, that the Royal Baking Powder Company considers its trade- 
mark worth just $1,600,000 a letter. This is, perhaps, the most valuable trade-mark in existence, 
though it is rivaled in value by 'Kodak', 'Uneeda', 'Ivory' (as applied to soap), 'Coca-Cola', 
the name 'Gillette' used in connection with safety razors, and a half dozen others. Each of 
these trade-marks has become a national institution. To displace them in the mind would require 
competition of unheard-of magnitude and energy. 

The name 'Coca-Cola' is worth at least five million dollars; * * * 



(25) Nebraska High School Manual. Supplement in English, pp. 24-26. 

57 



Selling by trade-mark is one of the miracles of modern merchandising. Its development to 
a state of high efficiency has taken place during the last hundred years. * * * 'Wanamaker's' is a 
trade-name and 'Kodak' is a trade-mark. * * * No matter how distinctive or attractive a mark 
may be, it is worth but little if it is used in connection with an inferior article or with an article 
sold without profit. 

But a distinctive and suggestive trade-mark is of immense help in advertising and selling. 
Consider, for example, the trade-mark of Old Dutch Cleanser. It is full of human interest, motion, 
life, and suggestion. It brings up in "the mind the mental picture of dirt fleeing from an energetic 
Dutch scouring woman. That this mark has been a powerful aid to sales is obvious. Suppose 
Old Dutch Cleanser had been called Climax Cleaning Powder. Can you imagine anybody 
acquiring more than the most languid interest in anything with a name so dull? It reminds one 
of hard and sordid toil. 

Many portraits of living persons are used as trade-marks— notable among them being the 
face of W. L. Douglas, shoe manufacturer; and the portrait of Thomas A. Edison. * * * 

Among historical characters the picture and signature of Robert Burns, the poet, are com- 
bined in a trade-mark for cigars; the face of Benjamin Franklin is used as a trade-mark for the 
Saturday Evening Post, and will be found printed on the editorial page of each issue; Bismarck 
is the name for collars; Napoleon is used in connection with a brand of flour and "Bob" IngersoU 
is the trade-mark of a cigar." (24) 

Some selections from Literature in which Words may be classified: 

1. From Matthew Arnold: Sohrab and Rustum. 

* * * "But she 
Lies dying, with the arrow in her side 
In some far stony gorge out of his ken, 
A heap of fluttering feathers — never more 
Shall the lake glass her, flying over it; 
Never the black and dripping precipices 
Echo her stormy scream as she sails by: 

2. From Keats: St. Agnes Eve. 

"St. Agnes — Ah, bitter chill it was! 
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; 
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass. 
And silent was the flock in woolly fold: 

Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told • 

His rosary, and while his frosted breath. 
Like pious incense from a censer old, 
Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death. 
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith." 

3. From Tennyson: Lancelot and Elaine. 

"Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, 
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, 
High in her chamber up a tower to the east 
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot; 
Which first she placed where morning's earliest ray 
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam; 
Then fearing rust or soilure fashion'd for it 
A case of silk, and braided thereupon 
All the devices blazon'd on the shield 
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit, 
A border fantasy of branch and flower. 
And yeUow-throated nestling in the nest." 



(24) Munn & Co., pp. 1-2-6-23. 

58 



Some Excerpts on Words. 

1. From Longinus: 

CHOICE OF WORDS. 
"That a choice of the right words and of grand words wonderfully attracts and charms 
hearers — that this stands very high as a point of practice with all orators and all writers, because, 
of its own inherent virtue, it brings greatness, beauty, raciness, weight, strength, mastery, and an 
exultation all its own, to grace our words, as though they were the fairest statues — that it imparts 
to mere facts a soul which has speech — it may perhaps be superfluous to set at length, for my 
readers know it. For beautiful words are, in a real and special sense, the line of thought." (21) 

2. From Spencer: 

CHOICE OF WORDS. 

"How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary 
instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which 
simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say 'Leave the room', is less expressive than to 
point to the door. Placing the fingers on the lips is more forcible than whispering, 'Do not speak'. 
A beck of the hand is better than, 'Come here'. No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so 
vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much 
by translating into words. Again, it may be remarked that when oral language is employed, 
the strongest effects are produced by interjections, which condense entire sentences into syllables. 
And in other cases, where custom allows us to express thoughts by words, as in Beware, Heigho, 
Fudge, much force would be lost by expanding them into specific propositions. Hence, carrying 
out the metaphor that language is the vehicle of thought, there seems reason to think that in all 
cases the friction and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency; and that in composition, 
the chief, if not the sole thing to be done, is, to reduce the friction and inertia to the smallest 
amount possible. Let us then inquire whether economy of the recipient's attention is not the 
secret of effect, alike in the right choice and collocation of words, in the best arrangement of clauses 
in a sentence, in the proper order of its principal and subordinate propositions, in the judicious 
use of simile, metaphor, and other figures of speech, and even in the rythmical sequence of 
syllables. 

The greater forcibleness of Saxon English, or rather non-Latin English, first claims our 
attention. The several special reasons assignable for this may all be reduced to the general 
reason — economy. The most important of them is early association. A child's vocabulary is 
almost wholly Saxon. He says, I have, not I possess — I wish, not I desire. He does not reflect, 
he thinks; he does not beg for amusement, but for play; he calls things nice or nasty, not pleasant 
or disagreeable. The synonyms which he learns in after years, never become so closely, so organ- 
ically connected with the ideas signified, as do these original words used in childhood; hence 
the association remains less strong. But in what does a strong association between a word and 
an idea differ from a weak one? Simply in the greater ease and rapidity of the suggestive action. 
It can be nothing else. Both of two words, if they be strictly synonymous, eventually call up 
the same image. The expression — it is acid, must in the end give rise to the same thought as — it 
is sour; but because the term acid was learnt later in life, and has not been so often followed 
by the thought symbolized, it does not so readily arouse the thought as the term sour. If we 
remember how slowly and with what labour the appropriate ideas follow unfamiliar words in 
another language, and how increasing familiarity with such words brings greater rapidity and 
ease of comprehension; and if we consider that the same process must have gone on with the 
words of our mother tongue from childhood upwards, we shall clearly see that the earlier learnt 
and oftenest used words will, other things equal, call up images with less loss of time and energy 
than their later learnt synonyms. * * * 

The shortness of Saxon words becomes a reason for their greater force. One qualification, 
however, must not be overlooked. A word which in itself embodies the most important idea to 
be conveyed, especially when that idea is an emotional one, may often with advantage be a poly- 
syllabic word. Thus it seems more forcible to say, 'It is magnificent', than 'It is grand'. The 
word vast is not so powerful a one as stupendous. Calling a thing nasty is not so effective as 
calling it disgusting. * * * 



(21) Longinus, p. 55. 

59 



Once more, that frequent cause of strength in Saxon and other primitive words — their 
i mitative character, may be similarly resolved into the more general cause. Both those directly 
imitative, as splash, bang, whiz, roar, etc., and those analogically imitative, as rough, smooth, keen, 
blunt, thin, hard, crag, etc., have a greater or less likeness to the thing symbolized; and by making 
on the senses impressions allied to the ideas to be called up, they save part of the effort needed 
to call up such ideas, and leave more attention for the ideas themselves. 

The economy of the recipient's mental energy, into which are thus resolvable the several 
causes of the strength of Saxon English, may equally be traced in the superiority of specific over 
generic words." (39) 

3. From University Studies: 

ON THE COLOR-VOCABULARY OF CHILDREN. 
"The very interesting investigations and discussions on the development of the color-sense 
in man, during historical times, have incidentally shown the deficiency of ancient languages in 
words for simple sensations. * * * In seeking evidence for the recent evolution of the sense of color, 
Gladstone, Geiger, and others have shown that few words denoting color are used in the earliest 
literature of several nations. Furthermore, most of the color-words found denote shades of red, 
orange, or yellow. Violet is never named, blue very seldom, and green much less frequently 
than we might expect from its occurrence in nature. Quite similar results have been obtained 
from examples of the vocabularies of modern uncivilized peoples. Although most tribes have 
names for the principal colors of the spectrum, the terms denoting red or yellow are far more 
numerous and much more definite than others. 

The inference from these facts has been that primitive peoples are deficient, not merely in 
words for color, but also in color-perception. * * * On passing from material objects to mental 
phenomena it will be observed that comparatively few simple sensations have names. In this 
respect, however, the modern languages are far superior to the ancient. Locke noticed and 
deemed it worth while to record this peculiarity of language.^ He furthermore remarks concerning 
the indefinite character of names that 'men generally content themselves with some few obvious 
qualities', and adds that in organized bodies it is usually the shape, and in other bodies the color, 
that serves as a distinguishing mark. "2 

In temperature, 'hot', 'warm', 'cold', and 'cool' are the chief terms used. For the muscular 
sense we employ 'heavy', 'light', and 'elastic'. For touch there exist the terms 'rough', 'smooth', 
'shiny', 'granular', 'hard', 'soft', and 'sharp', besides many words taken from materials, as 
'velvety', 'silky', 'gummy', and 'furry'. 'Sour', 'bitter', and 'sweet' are the most important 
designations of taste. Comparison with the taste of better known substances is the chief expedient 
adopted to increase the definiteness of these descriptions. Odors are described in terms quite 
analogous to those employed for tastes. Sounds are 'high', 'loud', 'low', 'shrill', 'deep'. 

It will have been noted that the words for sensations given above are, without exception, 
adjectives. Nearly all the corresponding abstract nouns are used; but very few concrete nouns 
for these sensations exist. In sound, however, we have such concrete words as 'time', 'noise', 
'roar', and 'splash', besides many participial nouns, as 'rumbling', and 'singing'. * * * The sense 
of sight, perhaps, has developed a larger vocabulary than any other sense. Its words, too have 
advanced farthest on the way from adjectives to substantives. * * * It may be confidently stated, 
I think, that an educated person possesses a color-vocabulary of at least twenty-five terms. 

There seems little doubt that the practice of naming sensations or objects tends to increase 
the power of discrimination." (50) 

4. From Harper's Weekly: 

THE VALUE OF WORDS. 
* * * "Still words are like people. They have other qualities than precision and authenticity. 
They have glamour and color and texture and quality; they have associational value and breeding 
environment. * * * 



(39) Spencer, pp. 169-173. 

lEssay concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chap. 3, No. 2. 

aibid, Bk. Ill, Chap. 6, No. 29. 

(50) Wolfe, pp. 205-234. 



60 



But what the readers of to-day will not bear with is having his attention strained or held 
long at any given point. Meredith, Browning, Swineburne, James, Pater, and Hearne sacrificed 
readers because of their devotion to words, and because they would write words faithful to the 
coloring of their own spirit. * * * 

Perhaps Mr. Henry James somewhat overdoes the slow method when he announces a death 
by saying, 'the extremity of personal absence had indeed just overcome him', but at least the 
phrase has individuality; and Shakespeare conveyed the same idea by speaking of shuffling oflf 
this mortal coil, and the Bible, by yielding up the ghost. None of these phrases put haste before 
beauty. 

* * * We look to France for literary culture above all other countries, and yet M. Her 
Bergson said of Maeterlinck that he was little read, and understood only by the more highly 
educated circles. So words, as things in themselves, must be the luxury of the few; of those who 
still read poetry and old essays and the mediaeval mystics. It is the poets indeed who have deserved 
most nobly of words; who have chiefly endowed them with color and personality and associational 
value. 

'It is really odd', said a young girl, the other day, walking through an old-fashioned garden, 
'how the flowers are mixed up with the poets that you can not think of them separately. Who 
could see vine leaves and not think of Hedda, or lilacs without remembering Keats. If it is a bed 
of pansies you look at, you see Ophelia, face downward in the marsh in which Millais drowned her. 
The geranium always brings back the glass of water by Eveline's bedside. I never saw basil 
growing, but if one did and called it the basil plant one would think of Keats; but if one called 
it 'swRet basil' one thinks of Shelley's unknown Madonna'. 

It was quite true, only the thought might be carried farther. For who looks at a growling, 
angry, northern sea thinks of Shelley; and if you see from a height a far-off wrinkled sea you 
remember Tennyson; and if you swim in the ocean you recite Swineburne. If you see scenery 
that reminds you of a garish postal-card, with a castle and water-fall and moonlight, you are 
back again with Tennyson and 

'The long light shakes 
Across the lakes 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.' 

When you see buildings mirrored in water you are with Shelley again, as you are when- 
ever you see tiny shallops in flowing water, and the big sea liners and coastwise steamers speak 
loudly of Kipling. 

The heavens and the stars and the whole shifting scenery of the sky, clouds and moon and 
dropping sun, belong largely to Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Shelley; and skylarks and nightingales 
belong to Shelley and Matthew Arnold and George Meredith. * * * Who would say 'daedal' or 
'hoary' and not remember Shelley; or subtle and sanguine and fleet without being consciously 
Swineburnian? 

The words of the street may grow and change in form and content and lead the masses 
hither and yon; but doubtless there will always, too, be quiet shelters where thoughtful men will 
read their poets and learn to love strange words and beautiful, and find them valuable just for 
themselves." (18) 

5. From "The Nation": 

THE WAY OF WORDS. 

"The fact is that words, the most important medium of exchange, are passing into the 
hands of the favored few. * * * The history of words and their combat with ideas can be made 
absorbing. It is not a return to the quixotic methods of Max MuUer that is desirable. Lincoln 
acquired the instinct for words more simply by studying the Bible and a few other great books. 
Once let me get the sense of words in typical operation, as so often happens there, with their 
economy of effort in catching and crystallizing elusive meanings, and we will not willingly lose it. 
It is not for us here to suggest a more practicable means than Lincoln's; and yet we hope, too, 
that when the Oxford Dictionary is completed Sir James Murray, or some one with his enthusiasm, 
will, either by book or by lectures, place the results of that great work rather more vitally before 
the popular imagination than can its mere totality." (42) 



(18) Harper's Weekly, p. 5. 
(42) The Nation, p. 543. 



61 



6. From Talks on Teaching Literature: 

"The teacher of literature in the secondary schools, then, is to consider that although his 
work is primarily done as a part of the school requirement, he need not be without some clear 
and deliberate intention in regard to the permanent effect upon the education and so upon the 
character of the pupil. He may treat the getting of his charges through the examinations as a 
purely secondary matter; a matter, moreover, which is practically sure to be accomplished if the 
greater and better purposes of the study have been secured. Besides a general knowledge of 
literary history, the student should gain from his training in the secondary school a vivid sense 
of the importance and value of words; an appreciation of word-values as shown in actual use 
by the masters; should increase in knowledge of life, and as it were gain experiences vicariously, 
so as to advance in perception of intellectual and moral values; should be advanced in the 
control of the feelings; in enthusiasm; and in the development of that noblest of faculties, the 
imagination." (3) 

II. Literary Phrases. 

"Not all the poetic delights of the mind are enabled or occasioned by the influence of words 
alone. Many are complex and not derivable from single ideas or things. A common attribute 
joined to a common object in a new relation does not necessarily yield a product as tame as either 
but may amount to a revelation of beauty." (36) 

We have seen that words owe all their aesthetic or emotional power to 
the type-forces or ideals they stand for. The phrase is the simplest combina- 
tion of type-qualities and is composed of a noun (or other words) as base 
(modified term) and a modifying element (modifier). When the type-qualities 
of the modified term have new qualities added by the modifier, or when the 
old qualities are added to or changed in any way by the type-elements in the 
modifier, we then have, properly, the literary phrase. The modifier may be 
a word, or it may be a prepositional phrase, or it may be a participial phrase — 
examples, wise men; men of wisdom, men possessing wisdom. In the type- 
elements in the experience of life we need not only a single word but such 
elements in a combination of w^ords in order to help us the better to express 
ourselves. There is need then of phrases and also of their scientific meaning. 
Literary phrases are of five classes: Prose; epithetic; figurative; emotional 
and poetic. (For a complete treatment of phrases see number 36 in Bib- 
liography.) 

One way of using these phrases is to select and classify them as given in 
literature. The following are excellent examples for use in classification. 

Literary Phrases from "The Vision of Sir Launfal": 

musing organist .... chilly wall, 

loved instrument .... a charger. 

our infancy the maiden knight. 

great winds unscarred mail. 

faint hearts young knight's heart. 

Druid wood chill winds. 

drowsy blood pastures bare. 

inspiring sea winter-proof. 

lavish summer tinkling waters. 

(3) Bates, p. 27. 
(36) Sherman, p. 52. 

62 




THE KNIGHT 



poorest comer . 
day in June 
meadows green 
high-tide . . . 
unscarred heaven 
season's youth . 
burnt-out craters 
Holy Grail . . 
the rushes . . 
one day of June 
outpost of winter 



steel-stemmed trees. 

winter palace of ice. 

fairy masonry. 

elfin builders of the frost. 

chimney-wide. 

imprisoned sap. 

Christmas carol. 

great hall-fire. 

forest's tangled darks. 

icy strings. 

ruddy hght. 



Literary phrases may be used also as Subject of Themes. A phrase may 
suggest: (1) An oral story; (2) A written one as in the case of the following 
which was written by a seventh grade girl: 

THE KNIGHT. 

"When I think of a knight, I think of a tall, broad shouldered, young man just ready to 
start out on an errand of mercy. 

He is clothed in armor from head to foot. In his hand he carries a spear and on his arm 
a shield. His pure, handsome, cleanly cut face looks but from 'neath a helmet which sets far 
over his massive forehead. His whole appearance suggests strength and skill and grace. He is 
seated on a large, snow-white charger, also clothed in steel. 

Then I see him later in life. He is riding through the forest perfectly fearless and soon he 
approaches a village which he enters and perhaps there he performs many good missions and 
kills or captures some cruel tyrant. Then he goes back to great glory with his king and other 
knights who were perhaps brought up with him". 

Some selections from Literature in which phrases may be selected and 
classified. 

1. From Keats: Endymion, Book IV. 

"There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade 
From some approaching wonder, and behold 
Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold 
Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire. 
Dying to embers from their native fire." 

2. From Shakespeare: Hamlet. 

"Hamlet. Seems, madam! nay, it is; 

I know not 'seems', 
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye. 
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage. 
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly; these indeed seem. 
For they are actions that a man might play: 
But I have that within which passeth show; 
These but the trappings and the suits of woe." 

3. From Shelley: Alastor, or the Spirit of SoHtude. 

"Obedient to the light 
That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing 
The windings of the dell. — The rivulet 



63 



Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine 

Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell 

Among the moss with hollow harmony 

Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones 

It danced, like childhood laughing as it went: 

Then through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, 

Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 

That overhung its quietness." 

III. Figures. 

"Because of the limitations of the mind in devising and remembering 
names, we make the words of our common vocabulary do duty for many 
thousands of meanings for which expression could not be otherwise provided". 
(For complete treatment of figures see number (36) below.) 

IV. Sensory Activities — Sense Appeals. 

Of course we do not get the exact image that the writer saw unless we 
know certain of the exact details that constituted it in his mind, in this our 
study of sensory imagery, as applied to the interpretation of literature. But 
this exact image is not necessary as the pupil can, if his experience be sufficient, 
recreate the necessary image and thus be in sympathy with the author. 

But the experiences of the pupil are very limited, as a rule — he has not 
seen enough. The experiences of the city pupil often differ widely from those 
of the country pupil and vice versa. The spirit of his generation also differs 
widely from that to w^hich his grandmother and grandfather belonged. So 
we should help the pupil understand the spirit of the times in which the selec- 
tion was written and also try to broaden his cognitive (perceptive) powers 
by pictures, conversations, lectures, etc. 

Judd says: 

"Good pedagogy should call into activity all the powers of the mind of the learner. Thus 
in the case of the language teacher, to utiHze the visual and the graphic centers only, and allow 
the auditory and the motor speech centers to lie barren, is to get only a portion of the sensory 
impression that may be got if all the centers are utilized. 

Again, since some individuals of a group will learn better by the utilization of the visual 
and the graphic centers, others by the utilization of the auditory and the motor-speech centers, 
etc., every course in language should give opportunity for both forms of impression, that is, for 
the hearing, and seeing (reading); for speaking and writing. 

Language study is best cultivated by utilizing the nervous energy of all four centers, that is, 
the ear, the eye, the vocal organs and the hand. Each must support the other, thus heightening 
the total impression. 

Generalizations, in this case principles and laws, must base upon sense perceptions, in this 
case spoken or written words and phrases, and must follow, not precede them." (20) 

Although we cannot share the exact experiences we can enter sympathet- 
ically into the pupil's pictures and his sensations. My point is that, by 
instilling into the mind of the pupil the necessity of a wise unselfishness, the 
eflacement of a too large egoism, and a willingness to become liberally minded, 
he will make the selection vital by the ability to recreate the sensory image — the 
appeals to the five senses. "Captains Courageous" abounds in types of sound 



(36) Sherman, pp. 68-93; 60-86. 
(20) Judd, pp. 228-229. 



64 



and motion. One can hear, see and smell, the sounds, sights and odors 
respectively of the sea. The type idea is prevalent throughout Kipling. 
The type is shown in the following italicized words. 

Types of Form: 

* * * while behind the cod three or four graybacks broke the water into boils. 

Types of Motion: 

He passed like a big snake from the table to his bunk. 

Types of Color: 

The sea was running round him in silver-colored hills. 

Types of Smell: 

* * * a fine full flavor of cod-fish hung round rubber boots and blue jerseys 
* * * and the smell of the earth after rain. 

Types of Sound: 

* * * the anchor came up with a sob. 

To visualize is to image, to picture for the eye, if taken literally. But in 
its broader meaning it appeals to all of the senses. Appeals to the sense of 
hearing are often more powerful than appeals to the sight and the appeals 
to the touch and taste while considered as minor appeals are sometimes full 
of power. The appeal to hearing may be made by words similar in sound 
to the sounds they describe (onomatopoetic words) as buzz of bees; crackle of 
fire; sizzling bacon and eggs; cluck-cluck of the chickens, moo of the cow, 
harsh grunt of the pigs, and the brook sang and bubbled along. Details of 
color, motion and actions are suggestive to sight. 

As to the method of arousing and stimulating these sensory activities we 
may use the following: 

1. Sense appeals — through the medium of the five senses. 

2. Concrete examples, or 

3. Questions by the Teacher. 

After the concrete example is read, such as from Tennyson: Passing of 
Arthur (See 11. 361-393. Contribution III.) The Teacher may call for 
(1) picture, (2) omitted details from members of the class. 

Another plan which may be followed is: The teacher may ask questions 
to bring out certain details as to color, sound, touch, significance of figures, 
epithets, characters, etc. These questions emphasize the value of the sensory 
imagery, for sensory imagery means the concrete impressions — that appeal 
to the senses — seeing, hearing, feeling, touch and taste. Originally all language 
was pictorial, and pupils as well as adults care for the illustrated book, the 
illustrated lecture and the like, so we see the important part these concrete 
visual images occasion in our daily life. 

While the illustrations of the visual and the auditory images are common 
in literature and the appeals made in literature to those sense organs of lesser 

65 



note — smell, touch, and feeling are less often found, yet they are of value. 
As effective uses of the sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch we cite 
the following from literature. 

I. From Richard Dehan (Clothilde Inez Mary Graves): Between Two 
Thieves. 

"The horn of the herdsman sounded from the lower Alps, and neckbells tinkled as the long 
lines of placid cows moved from the upper pastures in obedience to the call, breathing perfume 
of scented vetch and honied clover, leaving froth of milk from trickling udders on the leaves and 
grass as they went." 

II. From Stevenson: The Black Arrow. 

1. "An arrow sang in the air, like a huge hornet; it struck old Appleyard between the 
shoulder-blades, and pierced him clean through, and he fell forward on his face among the cabbages. 
Hatch, with a broken cry, leapt into the air; then, stooping double, he ran for the cover of the 
house. And in the meanwhile Dick Shelton had dropped behind a lilac, and had his cross-bow 
bent and shouldered, covering the point of the forest." 

2. "The daylight, which was very clear and gray, showed them a ribband of white foot- 
path wandering among the gorse. Upon this path, stepping forth from the margin of the wood, 
a white figure now appeared. It paused a little, and seemed to look about; and then, at a slow 
pace, and bent almost double, it began to draw near across the heath. At every step the bell 
clanked. Face it had none; a white hood, not even pierced with eye-holes, veiled the head; 
and as the creature moved, it seemed to feel its way with the tapping of a stick. Fear fell upon 
the lads, as cold as death. 

"A leper," said Dick, hoarsely. 

"His touch is death," said Matcham. "Let us run." 

Such sensory images as these with their labeling and analysis are not 
an indispensable condition to the teaching of English, but they are a means 
to an end— to stimulate, to arouse interest. Without going into details, there 
are other ways to the vizualizing process which are also vital in literature, 
such as the use of concrete illustration to emphasize the abstract, and finally 
the objective message of the selection. 

These images, these pictures in the mind, the sensory impressions, i. e., 
the imaginative concept find in experience their basis. Pupils may take a 
particular passage in a selection that appeals to them and write in such a way 
about it as to bring out the subjective meaning. This message may come 
in the form of a story, an essay, or poem, but whatever it is, the method does 
not vary. The objective message is interpreted in a vivid way by the mind 
of the pupil and he arrives at the subjective meaning. The ultimate meaning 
or message is then revealed. "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
Aix" by Browning is a good illustration of this. 

In order to get a fuller conception of the ultimate truth or subjective 
meaning of the literary message the pupil's mind must perceive the subjective 
message and the incidental development of the intellect and emotions will 
eventually bring an enlargement of consciousness. By revizualizing concepts 
and revitalizing emotions we arrive at the true meaning of life. This har- 
monizes with President Wilson's utterance in the following taken from the 
Supplement in English. 

"President Wilson, in an address delivered before the Association of America Universities 
in 1910, affirmed that the higher education should insure, essentially, to all privileged to attain 
it, a Scientific Consciousness, a Philosophic Consciousness, a Literary Consciousness, and a 

66 



Historico-Economic Consciousness. The teachers of science, of philosophy, of history and of 
sociology, seem to have established their right, by the effectiveness of their work, to the recognition 
thus accorded. It is for us, who are entrusted with the task of fixing the sympathies and destiny 
of the coming generation towards letters, to make good our claim to the third place in the 
scheme." 

"It is as possible to acquire a rhetorical literary consciousness, by study of twenty or thirty 
topics through a period of at least two years, as of arithmetical processes. To supply these topics, 
it is necessary to analyze the modes of literary masters and adapt them inductively to the student's 
powers. The first task will be to teach him the 'notation' of rhetorical or literary art; that is, 
how to use sense-images, how to impart visual quality to speech. He may do this often, by instinct, 
orally. He cannot compass it every time, in writing, without detailed instruction. 

We find that the simplest means used by great writers is to stimulate rather than direct 
imagination. They produce a picture by bringing incongruous objects or elements together. For 
instance, Hawthorne begins An Old Woman's Tale with this sentence: 

In the house where I was born, there used to be an old woman crouching 
all day long over the kitchen fire, with her elbows on her knees and her feet in 
the ashes. 

Crouching over flames in a fire-place is of course a visualizing pose, but the minds of many 
readers would not respond to it. After compelling and fixing in our consciousness this scene, 
by the incongruity of shoes thrust into warm ashes on the hearth, the author proceeds effectively 
with his sketch. Kipling forces a strong picture, in The Naulahka, by incongruity of action: — 

A few miles from Rawut Junction his driver had taken from underneath 
the cart a sword, which he hung around his neck, and sometimes used on the 
bullocks as a goad. 

The scene presented in each case spreads in our minds. Each author depends on the principle 
that, if we can arouse imagination by shrewd use of a part, the mind will go on and realize the 
whole. 

Incongruity of elements and incongruity of action will furnish several weeks of incidental 
and interesting work, both in constructing visual scenes from life, and in searching out examples 
of the like in literature. Sense-appeals of color, of sound, of taste, of touch, and of odor, and 
their use in literature, may next be studied. Examples like this from Hardy will be found not to 
be beyond the capacity of grammar and high-school pupils: — 

The lightning now was the color of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like 
a mailed army. A poplar in the immediate neighborhood was like an ink- 
stroke on burnished tin. 

Of course the learner must study out what the given sensation is like, before he attempts 
to impart an experience of it to us through the medium of words. He will not be slow in meeting 
this requirement. He is more acute in classifying and illustrating his impressions than he is like 
to be in maturer years. Inquiry into the potency of sense-appeals to imagination, and into the 
secret of employing this power, is a fascinating theme. We all use this power more or less natur- 
ally and successfully in common talk, but generally fail of effectiveness with it when we use the 
pen. Studies of sense-appeals may be provisionally handled, along with usual rhetorical exercise, 
in a fortnight. "= * * 

He might study also here how to combine color with types of form; as in this example: 

The sky was blue, ever so blue, and all silver-notched at the edge, and 
tepeed with snowy mountain peaks. 

Description by angles and other enabling lines of form will make up other topics or divisions, 
in the student's work. He should now variously be helped to realize that imagination concerns 
itself with the framework, the geometry of a scene or object, as well as with its details. When 



67 



the governing line or angle is given, the mind will often, as with a map, make over the outline 
into a completed picture. Note the effect, on imagination, of this example: 

The conductor stood leaning towards the orchestra, during the interruption, 
with his arm and baton at an angle of forty-five degrees, waiting to resume. 

From the suggestion of the angle, we construct the pose of the conductor, and, with this, 
imagination goes on to supply the orchestra, which he faces, and even the audience behind him. 

Elementary description, as dependent thus upon types of form and color, can be administered 
provisionally in a dozen or fifteen lessons. Narration, which is dependent fundamentally upon 
types of movement, will require as many more. The student must learn to analyze motion, just as 
he analyzes form and color, and must specify exactly what modes appear. If he can declare 
the right one, the picture is sure. Note the precision of Dickens here: 

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I beheld 
Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag. 

The typical idea of 'lashing' makes us see the movements of the boy, as he strikes himself 
fiercely with the bag over the hips and shoulders. This action, with mention of the 'blue' color, 
so inspires our fancy that we construct the whole scene of the street and the speaker as well as the 
approaching boy. 

Exposition, as the literary development of principles from facts, belongs next, and should 
be taught in definite, inductive lessons. Argumentation, which is applied exposition, may be 
postponed till a later year. The study of characterization, characterization by the use of traits 
or imaginative appeals, should follow exposition. There is probably little need of illustrating, 
here, the modes of characterization used by great writers. The following is a notable example 
from Maupassant: 

Chicot, on the contrary, was red, fat, short, and hairy. He looked like a 
raw beefsteak. He continually kept his left eye closed, as if he were aiming at 
something or at somebody, and when the people said jestingly to him, 'Open 
your eye, Labouise', he would answer, 'Never fear, sister, I'll open it when there 
is a good reason to'. 

Labouise had a habit of calling every one 'sister', even his scavenger partner. 

Of course we gain an acquaintance, by this, with Chicot, much as if we had seen and heard 
what is here set down. We gain acquaintance with people by the same means, whether in life 
or books. We must know how to use this means in order to characterize successfully, just as 
we must know the means of describing and narrating vividly. Rhetoric cannot be administered, 
more than carpentry or cooking or piano-playing, in a general way. There are graded and definite 
steps, steps of which none can be omitted, in every art. (25) 

V. Characterization. 

Oral characterizations, which stimulate the mind to discover the person 
as well as the personality are not dependent upon incongruity of elements or 
upon sense-appeals. There are available besides, the Vizualizing Action and 
the Vizualizing Pose. These supply a momentary picture by way of provincial 
or incidental characterization, 
I. Illustrations of Vizualizing Action: 

1. From Life: 

"Coming along the street was a boy in brown knickerbockers, eating from two ice-cream 
cones, one in each hand." 

"The captain used glue to seal his letters, and never failed to pound on each, after using 
the glue, with his fist." 



(25) Nebraska High School Manual, pp. 28, 7, 8, 9, 10. 

68 



2. From Literature: 

"No", said Lapham rather absently. He put out his huge foot and pushed the ground- 
glass door shut between his little den and the bookkeepers, in their larger den outside. 

(Howells.) 

II. Illustrations of Vizualizing Pose. 

"Mrs. Lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held in her right hand against the edge 
of her left." 

"During the whole evening, Mr. Jellaby sat in a corner with his head against the wall, as if 
he were subject to low spirits." 

A further means by which to show the presence of persons to the imagina- 
tion is by singularities in dress or looks. 

"Tifrgenev continually uses the mode to introduce special characters visually and will 
furnish our best examples here: 

A boy of six came up, grimed all over with soot like a kitten, with a shaved head, perfectly 
1 aid in places, in a torn, striped frock, and huge overshoes on his bare feet. 

'There was the light click of hurrying heels, the door opened, and in the doorway appeared 
a girl of eighteen, in a chintz cotton gown, with a black straw hat on her fair, rather curly 
hair'." (36) 

We become acquainted with people by acts, words, appearances, and 
environment and judge them by means of "appeals" of character, mood or 
incidents as based on the law of cause and effect. The mode of mental action 
in interpreting appeals is emotional, i. e., it is an inference made in imagination, 
as distinguished from the purely logical process. (For further particulars see 
number 36, in BibHography.) 

As regards the preparation of EngHsh Literature in the primary and 
secondary schools, Dean Sherman, of the Graduate College, University of 
Nebraska, in "English and English Literature in the College", says: 

"The fact that literature is cast, not in the kind of English that the school youth speaks, 
but in the universalized idiom, terse and weighty in matter, and considerably heavier in vocabulary, 
constitutes the chief difficulty. The average college student, in his first year of residence, can 
scarcely read classical English prose with ready understanding. Professor McElroy, of the 
University of Pennsylvania, puts the case more strongly. He says: 

'Out of the thousands of young men who in the last twenty-two years have entered the 
institution to which our personal knowledge extends, only a few could be said to know their own 
language. * * * Their vocabulary was scarcely larger than a day laborer's; their powers of ob- 
servation were of the lowest — of a page of English literature read by them they could give nothing 
approaching a satisfactory account; the words had passed before them in marshalled array, 
only to leave them half blind. Here is again the same gulf fixed between spoken and written 
English that has been already considered in the first part of this paper. * * * This is the difference 
to be overcome. They must learn the ultimate message out of loritten words just as they got it 
out of the spoken. They must learn to interpret books just as they read men and things in their 
daily walks outside. The new plan of using complete books like Ivanhoe and Tales From Shakes- 
peare as school readers in the grades, insures greater and more immediate interest than the old 
stereotyped and often meaningless 'reading lesson'. * * * 

Literature is a thing to be understood and felt; and teachers in the secondary schools must 
so regard it. * * * 

The boy who comes to college should have learned how to gather up the sense out of a page 
of plain, common prose as quickly as he ever will. Then can anything be done to keep the sensi- 
bilities of school children from being intellectualized and deadened before college years are 
reached? Very evidently. Sixty years or more ago, under the inspiration of the poet Grundtvig, 



(36) Sherman, pp. 94-129. (Elements of Literary Composition). 

69 



a school was founded at Askov, Jutland, for the specific end of developing the emotional side of the 
mind. This institution has become famous, and numerous sister academies have sprung up all 
over the kingdom. They are called Hoj Skoler, 'High Schools', are supported by the Government, 
and aim professedly and conscientiously to secure for their pupils the aandelig udvikling, 'educa- 
tion of the sensibilities'. The means depended upon for such efifect is principally the study of 
famous men, the great characters of history. A better means would surely be literature, if the 
country had one rich and varied enough. Yet these schools are considered wholly successful, 
and are growing in popularity. If we can learn how to teach to the same efifect we can easily 
do better in this country. Our instructors must have their pupils read emotional literature to 
help them feel what has feeling in it, just as thought literature to help them interpret thought 
meanings. Let them tell something like the story of Rab and His Friends or the execution of 
Charlotte Corday, preparatory to class reading. Further on, in the first high school years, some- 
thing vastly better can be done, as many experiments have shown. This present term, a tenth 
grade teacher that I know found it impossible to interest her pupils in the lyrics of Tennyson, 
the prescribed work for her year. Only a few in the class were not bored with the notes and com- 
ments they had to learn. There was particularly a big German boy, who was good in other work, 
but conspicuously dull and slow at this. The experiment was tried of setting the class at finding 
out what there was in the poems that was not prose, and determining what words and expressions 
had feeling in them. The whole class was interested in the very first exercise. In the second, 
the stupid German boy and the other dull ones were as good as the best; and the whole class 
read once more the poems first studied as unmeaning things, with evident delight. There will 
be small risk of that class losing its capacity to respond to emotional literature, if the power of 
discernment is not again disused. * * * I had a student once who was recommended by his teacher 
as a genius. He read only the selectest things, and walked knee deep in criticism. Moreover, 
he was afraid of studying literature systematically, according to class methods, lest it should spoil 
his powers of appreciation and injure the delicacy of his poetic sense. I tested those powers 
and that sense one day by getting him to read these lines from Tennyson: 

'And I rode and found a mighty hill. 
And on top a city walled; the spires 
Pricked with incredible pinnacles unto Heaven'. 

'Where is the poetry here in words?' I asked. 'I think it is in 'incredible', he said, or 
'spires'. 'How about 'pricked?' I ventured. 'I don't understand that', he answered. *I 
don't see any meaning in the sentence'. Yet all there is of Tennyson consists in tremendous 
figures like this — which indeed is but one of the minor great ones. This student poor in penetra- 
tion as he was, could read poetry far better than the majority of my class when they left college, 
or of any college class that I have since known. * * * 

The simple truth is: Taste is of the feelings; and we have been trying to make it a thing 
of the intellect, of reason. Polite literature appeals to taste and must be spiritually discerned 
and appreciated." (35) 

Literature is, moreover, the highest form of art. The aim of art is to 
convey an emotion from one soul to another. 

Tolstoi's definition of art is as follows: 

"Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain 
external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected 
by these feelings, and also experience them. 

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty, 
or God; * * * but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, 
and indispensible for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and humanity. * * * 
The estimations of the value of art (i. e., of the feelings it transmits) depends on men's perception 
of the meaning of life." (44) 



(35) Sherman in Educational Review, pp. 42-56. 
(44) Tolstoi, pp. 43-45. 



70 



He further says: 

"According to Burke (1729-1792 — 'Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of 
the Sublime and Beautiful'), the sublime and beautiful, which are the aim of art, have their origin 
in the promptings of self-preservation and society. These feelings, examined in their source, 
are means for the maintenance of the race through the individual. The first (self-preservation) 
is attained by nourishment, defense, and war; the second (society) by intercourse and propaga- 
tion. Therefore self-defense, and war, which is bound up with it, is the source of the sublime; 
sociability, and the sex-instinct, which is bound up with it, is the source of beauty." (44) 

Longinus writes that there are five different sources of lofty style which 
are the most productive, the power of expression being a foundation common 
to all five types, and inseparable from them. He informs us as follows: 

"First and most potent is the faculty of grasping great conceptions, as I have defined it in 
my work on Xenophon. Second comes passion, strong and impetuous. These two constituents 
of sublimity are in most cases native-born, those which now follow come through art: the proper 
handling of figures, which again seem to fall under two heads, figures of thought, and figures of 
diction; then noble phraseology, with subdivisions, choice of words, and use of tropes, and of 
elaboration; and fifthly, that cause of greatness which includes in itself all that preceded it, 
dignified and spirited composition." (21) 

Gayley in his "Literary Criticism" gives the following excerpts: 

1 Longinus, Dionysus — On the Sublime — "The chief value of this treatise is that it shows 
us how the classic literature appealed to the literary sense of the ancients." 

2. Herbert Spencer: Essay on Philosophy on Style: 

"One of the most important of modern contributions to the theory of style. Spencer 
attempts to explain the effect of both prose and poetry upon the principle that the language is 
most forcible which best economizes the mental energies and the mental sensibilities." (14) 

And again in his Classic Myths he says: 

"That the study of the classic myths stimulates to creative production, prepares for the 
appreciation of poetry and other kinds of art, and furnishes a clue to the spiritual development 
of the race. 

1. Classic mythology has been for succeeding poetry, sculpture, and painting, a treasure 
house replete with golden tales and glimmering thoughts, passions in the rough and smooth, 
and fancies rich bejewelled. 

2. For the reader the study of mythology does much for a poet, sculptor, or painter. It 
assists him to thread the labyrinth of art, not merely with the clew of tradition, but with a thread 
of surer knowledge whose surest strand is sympathy. * * * 

The knowledge of mythic lore has led men in the past to broadly appreciate the motives 
and conditions of ancient art and literature, and the uniform and ordered evolution of the aesthetic 
sense. And, besides enriching us with heirlooms of fiction and pointing us to the sources of 
imaginative joy from which early poets of Hellenic verse or Norse, or English, drank, the classic 
myths quicken the imaginative and emotional faculties to-day, just as of old. * * * The study, 
when illustrated by master pieces of literature and art, should lead to the appreciation of concrete 
artistic productions of both kinds. * * * 

Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the myths of the ancients, as the earliest literary 
crystallization of social order and religious fear, record the incipient history of religious ideals 
and moral conduct. For though ethnologists may insist that to search for truth in mythology 
is vain, the best of them will grant that to search for truth through mythology is wise and profitable. 

The term classic, however, is, of course, not restricted to the products of Greece and Rome; 
nor, is it employed as synonymous with classical or as antithetical to Romantic. From the 
extreme Classical to the extreme Romantic is a far cry; but as human life knows no divorce of 



(44) Tolstoi, p. 19. 
(21) Longinus, p. 13. 
(14) Gayley, pp. 222-228. 

71 



necessity from freedom, so genuine art knows neither an unrelieved Classical nor an unrestrained 
Romantic. Classical and Romantic are relative terms. The Classical and the Romantic of one 
generation may merit equally to be the classic of the next." (15) 

Closely associated with the word "classic" is the word "culture" both 
of which include, we may say, the element of refinement. What is culture? 
Matthew Arnold in his essay on Culture and Anarchy says: 

"The scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present 
difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, in all the 
matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world; and 
through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and 
habits, which we now follow stanchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is virtue in 
following them stanchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. 

Certainly we are no enemies of the Nonconformists; for, on the contrary, what we aim at 
is their perfection. But culture which is the study of perfection, ( — p. XIII) leads us, as we in 
the following pages have shown, to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious perfection, 
developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, developing all parts of our 
society. 

Culture then is properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its 
origin in the love of perfections; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely 
or primarily of the scientific passion for mere knowledge, but also of the normal and social passion 
for doing good. As in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquien's words: 'To 
render an intelligent being yet more worthy ', so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto 
which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: 'To make reason and the will of God 
prevail." (2) 

While culture may cause us "to conceive of true human perfection as a 
harmonious perfection, developing all sides of our humanity", yet we have the 
practical or knowledge-getting side to think of in the development of all parts 
of our society — a correlation of the two is essential in order to develop a well- 
rounded person. Among the "Courses of Study in Enghsh" which were sent 
in reply to Questionnaire "A" one — an Academic-Normal Course in a Tech- 
nical School — showed that there was an attempt at the correlation of the 
development of the sensibilities and of the knowledge-getting side of life. 
This Hampton Institute "Course of Study" says: "The Trade School and 
Agricultural Department furnish lists of subjects suggested by their work, 
and these give an endless variety of topics for short oral exposition". (For 
Course of Study in English for this school see Part II, Existing Conditions.) 

Summary: The purpose which the teacher of English has in mind, 
primarily, is to instruct the pupils to read with understanding, to speak cor- 
rectly, to write correctly, to develop the sensibilities of the pupil and to 
promote his information or knowledge-getting powers. In order to do this 
the English teacher must note the material changes that overtake the pupil 
during the junior and senior stage of high school work and form and exalt 
the new sex-consciousness by noble literature that presents healthy types of 
womanhood and manhood. Teachers of English must deal with the senti- 
ments as well as with the understanding through use of literature. Literature 
is efficient in developing the feelings of youth if properly administered. The 
mere mechanical pronunciation of words as an end in itself will not make the 
pupil proficient, but he must learn to read in such a way as to recreate in 



(15) Gayley, pp. XXXI-XXXIII; 7 
(2) Arnold, pp. X-XIII; 7. 

72 



his own consciousness and in his hearer's consciousness the essential concepts 
and the essential emotions which dictated the author's writing. Words must 
be made vital that sentences, paragraphs and the whole composition may 
be transfused with the beauty and strength of imagination. 

During the adolescent period, Form begins to come into its own independ- 
ent rights. The eye, which in most persons is the sense nearest the mind is 
the seat of the sense of color, light and shade and form. Of these the color- 
sense seems to appeal most to the sentiments. While in the preadolescent 
stage the pupil sees light and shade best, the pupil in the adolescent stage far 
excels the preadolescent in response to colors about him. The blue sky, the 
blossoms, the green fields, etc., now inspire a new feeling. Colors have a 
suggestive meaning and symbohc power, crimson suggests blood, yellow 
suggests gold, and there is now felt both a new aesthetic pleasure and a new 
aesthetic pain in the contrast and harmony of color. The pupil should be 
given an opportunity to express in words the music and poetry of his soul. 
In this crude stage of self-expression we have the so-called Verse Writing. 
Reading and memorizing poetry will serve to develop the natural instinct 
for rhythm and euphony. Life affords a splendid array of subjects for this 
work such as the falling of leaves, trees swaying in the wind, snow-storms, etc. 

In a highly complex system the individual child is apt to be lost in the 
midst of machinery. The remedy is individual promotion— as now used in 
junior high schools — at reasonably frequent intervals, on the basis of single 
subjects instead of by grade, or groups of subjects. As education is a prepara- 
tion for completer living, it must include usefulness and happiness. For this 
reason, it should equip a pupil for a vocation, and also furnish him means 
for the enjoyment of the refined pleasures of life. 

While many of these pupils come from homes of no great intelligence, 
we should give them, as their right, not only somewhat the practical things 
of life, but arouse in them the desire for the things of culture also. Their 
possibilities of enjoyment outside of their occupational hours should not be 
denied them. The demand, in this age is great for a liberal education as well 
as for a vocational one, and vice versa. We want good intelligent citizens 
as well as good workmen. We should aim to inspire them to obtain a good 
education and good training that they may become good citizens. 

To accomplish this a pupil, at the beginning of his senior high school 
course, should have clearly in mind a general high school aim — Vocational 
Education, General Education or College Preparation. To attain these aims 
the High School Program of courses may present six groups of courses, a 
Required Group and five Elective Groups. He must decide which of the 
five Elective Groups — Academic, Professional, Commercial, Agricultural or 
Technical Arts — will best help him to realize his school aim. The Required 
Group should consist of English, Physical Education, and Chorus or Orchestra 
training. In addition to this he must take the required subjects and the 
necessary elective subjects in the chosen Elective Group. The Prevocational 
and Junior High School Course may present five groups of courses, a Required 
Group and four Elective Groups. The pupil must decide which of the four 

73 



Elective Groups — Academic, Commercial, Agricultural or Industrial Arts* will 
best help him to realize his school aim. The Required Group should consist 
of English, history, geography, sewing and cooking for girls, and manual 
training or shop work for boys, Physical Education and Chorus or Orchestra 
practice. In addition to these he must take the required subjects and the 
necessary Elective subjects in the chosen Elective Group. 

The suggestive "Course of Study" in English is meant to be flexible 
and is open to modifications according to the needs of the school. (It is 
outlined in the next division of this thesis.) 



*This term varies. 



74 



Part VI. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

A: 1—2. 

1. Aristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle, pp. 1-15-17. Edited by S. H. 

Butcher, M. B. London, Macmillan Company, Limited, New 
York: The Macmillan Company. Fourth Edition. 1907. 
(The Poetics of Aristotle is also found in Aristotle's Theory 
of Poetry and Fine Arts. Edited by S. H. Butcher, Litt. D., 
LL. D. Third edition, 1902.) 

2. Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy, pp. X, XIII, 7. London, 

Smith Elder and Company, 15 Waterloo Place. 1875. 

B: 3—6. 

3. Bates, Arlo. Talks on Teaching Literature — The Conditions. Part II, 

p. 27. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 
1906. 

4. Bennett, Arnold. Literary Taste— How to Form It, pp. 68,69. 

George H. Doran, New York City. 

6. BoNSER, Frederick G. Industrial Education, pp. 43-47. Teachers 

College, Columbia University, New York. 1914. 

C: 7—9. 

7. Carpenter, Baker and Scott. The Teaching of English in the Ele- 

mentary and the Secondary Schools, p. 46. Edited by J. E. 
Russel. Longmans, Green & Company, N. Y. 1904. 

8. Chubb, Percival. The Teaching of English. General Aims: Char- 

acteristics and Needs of the Adolescent Period, pp. 237-241. 
Edited by Nicholas Murray Butler. Macmillan Co., N. Y. 
1903. 

9. CuBBERLY, E. P. School Review. 19: 454-465. 1911. 

D: 10—11. 

10. Davis, Jesse B. Vocational and Moral Guidance, p. 137. Ginn and 

Company, Boston, New York, Chicago, London. 1914. 

11. De Quincey, Thomas. Leaders in Literature with a notice of Tradi- 

tional Errors Affecting them. Vol. VIII, pp. 3-4-5-11. Edin- 
burgh, Adams and Charles Black. MDCCCLXIII. 

75 



F: 12—13. 

12. Ford, Paul Leicester. The Many-Sided Franklin, pp. 106-116. 

The Century Company, New York. 1899. 

13. FORDYCE, C. College Ethics. Education 33: 71-79. 1912. 

G: 14—16. 

14. Gayley, Charles Mills. Literary Criticism, pp. 222-228. Ginn & 

Co., Boston. 1910. 

15. Gayley, Charles Mills. Classical Myths — In Literature and Art, 

pp. XXX-XXXIII— 7. Ginn and Company, Boston, New 
York, Chicago, London. 1911. 

16. Gayler, G. W. Vocational Guidance in the high school. Psychological 

Clinic. 9:161-66. Nov. 15. 1915. 

H: 17—20. 

17. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. V. II, pp. 442-446-456; 34-74-508. 

Adolescence and Literature. 

18. Harper's Weekly. The Value of Words. L. E. W. 57:5. July, 1916. 

19. Hosic, James F. Elementary Course in English, pp. 4-7. 

20. JuDD, Charles Hubbard. Psychology of High-School Subjects. Direct 

Sensory and Motor Processes, pp. 228-229. Ginn and Com- 
pany, Boston, Chicago, London, San Francisco. 1915. 

L: 21—22. 

21. LoNGiNUS. On the Sublime. Translated by A. 0. Pickard. Oxford 

College. Section VIII, pp. 12-13. Five Sources of the Sublime; 
Choice of Words, p. 55. The Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1906. 

22. LucKEY, G. W. A. Professional Training of Secondary Teachers in the 

U. S. Elementary and Secondary Teachers, pp. 233-236. 
Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. Mayer and 
Muller, Markgrafenstrasse, Berlin. 1903. 

M: 23—24. 

24. MuNN & Company. Trade Marks. Trade Names, pp. 1-6-23. New 

York. 1912. 

N: 25—27. 

25. Nebraska High School Manual. Supplement in English to Bulletin 

of The University of Nebraska, pp. 24, 26, 28, 7, 8, 9, 10. 1914. 

76 



P: 28—32. 

29. Public School Surveys: 

Minnesota, Minneapolis, f National Society for the Promotion of 
Industrial Education, pp. 412-696. Bulletin No. 21. C. A. 
Prosser. 1916. 

30. Oregon, Portland. E. P. Cubberly and Staff. In School Efficiency. 

Edited by Paul E. Hanus, pp. 124-219. World Book Co., 
New York. 1915. 

31. Utah, Salt Lake City. E. P. Cubberly and Staff. Authorized by 

Board of Education. 1915. 

32. Virginia, Richmond. Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Whole No. 162. Miscellaneous Series No. 7, pp. 287-289. 
Washington Government Printing Office. 1916. 

R: 33—33. 

33. Report of the National Joint Committee. On the Reorganization of 

High-School English. (Being now printed by U. S. Bureau 
of Education.) 

S: 34—40. 

35. Sherman, L. A. English and Enghsh Literature in the College, pp. 42- 

56. Educational Review, No. 10. Henry Holt and Company, 
New York. 1895. 

36. Sherman, L. A. Elements of Literature and Composition: Words, pp. 

3-28; Literary Phrases, pp. 53-67; 89-93. Figures, pp. 68-93; 
Characterization, pp. 94-114. The University Publishing 
Company, Lincoln, Nebraska. 1908. 

Analytics of Literature: Poetic Phrases, pp. 52-59. Figures, 
pp. 60-86. Ginn and Company, Boston, New York, Chicago, 
London. 1893. 

Elements of Literary Composition (in preparation): Sense- 
Appeals; Vizualization. 

37. Sherwood, Margaret. Conserving our Spiritual Resources, pp. 888-9. 

North American Review, 171 Madison Avenue, N. Y. Dec, 
1916. 

38. Snedden, David. The Problem of Vocational Education, pp. 3-4-9. 

Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston, New York and Chicago. 
1910. 

39. Spencer, Herbert. The Philosophy of Style. Part I. Causes of 

Force in Language which Depends upon Economy of the 
Mental Energies. 1. The Principle of Economy Applied to 
Words, pp. 169-173. In Representative Essays on the Theory 
of Style, edited by William T. Brewster. 

40. Stuff, F. A. Does Modern Teaching Indurate Sensibihty?, pp. 261-264. 

The Modern Review, Vol. XVI, No. 3. 1914. Calcutta. 

77 



T: 41—44. 

41. Teachers College Record. Vol. XIV. May, 1913. No. 3. Curri- 

culum of Horace Mann School, English, p. 143. 

42. The Nation. The Way of Words. 91:543. N. '10. 

44. Tolstoi, Lyof N. What is Art? Vol. XX, pp. 19-43-45. Charles 

Scribner's Sons, New York. 1911. 

U: 45—48. 

45. U. S. Bureau of Education. Report of Committee of Ten. Bulletin » 

p. 86. Dec. 28, 1893. 

46. Reorganization of the Public School System. Bulletin No. 8, pp. 

49-65; 86-87-117. 1916. 

47. Needed Changes in Secondary Education. Bulletin No. 10, pp. 6-14; 

23-26. 1916. 

48. Vocational Guidance. Bulletin No. 14, p. 91. 1914. 

W: 49—50. 

50. Wolfe, Harry K. On the Color-Vocabulary of Children. University 
Studies, Lincoln, Nebraska. V. 1, No. 3, pp. 205-234. 



78 



INDEX OF NAMES 



A Pages 

Aristotle 40 

Arnold, Matthew 41, 59, 61, 72 

B 

Bates, Arlo 62 

Bennett, Arnold 9 

Bergson, M. Henri 60 

Berkeley, California 49, 50 

Bible 61 

Bonser, Frederick G 44-46 

Browning, Mrs 44 

Browning, Robert 45, 61, 66 

Bryant, W. C 53 

Burke, Edmund 71 

Butler, Nicholas M 38, 49, 50 



Pages 

Hood, Thomas 44 

Horace Mann School 38 

Hosic, James 40, 41 

Hugo, Victor 44 

I 

Ibsen 38 

Industrial Arts 74 



James, Henry 61 

Judd, Charles 64 

K 

Keats, John 58, 61, 63 

Kipling, Rudyard 44, 64, 65, 67 



Carlyle, Thomas 44 

Carpenter, Baker & Scotfc 7, 8 

Chaucer, Geoffrey 38 

Chubb, Percival 33 

Coleridge, Samuel T 9 

Commercial Clubs 33-37 

Committee of Ten 10, 12, 27 

Cubberly, E. P 42, 43 



Davis, J. B 13, 14, 15 

De Quincey 8,9,15 

Dickens, Charles 44, 68 

E 

Elliott, Charles W ..54, 55 

Eliot, George 45 

Emerson, R. W 45, 55 

F 

Fordyce, Charles 38 

Ford, Paul Leicester 7, 8 

Prance 61 

G 

Gayley, C. M 71, 72 

Gayler, G. W 43, 44 

Graves, C. I. M 66 

H 

Harper's Weekly 60, 61 

Hardy, Thomas 67 

Hall, G. Stanley 38, 39, 46 

Hampton Institute, Va 41, 42 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel 67 

Hazlitt 9 

Herbert, George 55 



Lincoln, Abraham 15, 61 

Longinus 55, 59, 71 

Los Angeles, California 49, 50 

Luckey, G. W. A 51, 52 

M 

Maeterlinck 60 

Millet 56 

Miller, Max 61 

Munn & Co 58 

Murray, Sir James 61 

N 

National Joint Committee 

9, 26, 27, 40 

Nelson, Ernesto 54 



Parsons, Frank 5, 14 

Pater, Waller 60 

Practical Arts 12, 49 

Public School Surveys 16-26 



Questionnaire 
Questionnaire 



Q 

"A". 
'B". 



27-33 
33-37 



R 



Ruskin, John 56 

s 

Sainte-Beuve 41 

Scott, Walter 38 

Shakespeare, William 38, 63, 64 

Shelley, P. B 63, 64 

Sherman L. A 

56, 57, 62, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70 

Sherwood, Margaret 39, 40 

Snedden, David 11, 12 



* Index of subjects are found in the Bibliography. 

79 



Pages XJ Pages 

Spencer, Herbert 39, 60, 61 xJ. S. Bureau of Education 50-54 

Stevenson, R. L 66 u. S. Bulletin of Education 6, 13 

Stuff, F. A 77 u. S. Department of Labor 26 

Supplement in English. .55-57, 66-68 University Studies 60 

Swain, Thomas 53 

Swineburne, A. C 60, 61 y 

T Vocational Guidance 42 

Talks on — «* 

Teaching Literature 62 _^., „, , ** „„ „„ 

Technical Arts 49, 73 Wilson, Woodrow 66, 67 

Tennyson, Alfred 61, 70 Wolfe, Harry K 60 

The Nation 61, 62 

Tolstoi, Lyof N 56, 70, 71 Y 

Turgenev 69 Yale College 10 



80 



